The People of Sand and Slag
There may come a day when unspoiled natural scenery has no connection to our physical health, due to insanely high-tech medicine. But what kind of world would it be?
The author Paolo Bacigalupi said in a great interview about his career at the Mumpsimus blog, “With “Sand and Slag”, I had a beef with an old boss of mine, and his absolute belief that science would solve all our problems into the future.” This excerpt hints at the origin of the disturbing story, “The People of Sand and Slag.”
Paolo Bacigalupi, author of the widely acclaimed stories in the collection Pump Six and Other Stories
The folks at Trashotron describe the Pump Six collection, and even host an mp3 audio file of “The People of Sand and Slag” read by the author, which you can listen to free. And I hope they forgive my direct link to it.
Bacigalupi was featured on NPR’s Weekend Sunday Edition recently with his reading of a short excerpt of another of his famous “Green Sci-Fi” classics, “The Calorie Man.”
My favorite Pump Six blurb:
“I hate this guy. All of a sudden he comes out of nowhere, writing like a weird angel, and winning awards, and knocking us old pros out of the box with stories about stuff we hadn’t gotten around to thinking up yet. (Like that stupid bio dog!) Plus he’s young and good looking. Luckily, he has an unpronounceable name.”
– Terry Bisson, author of Numbers Don’t Lie and “Greetings”
[Update: found this interview of Paolo Bacigalupi from July of this year by Charles Tam]
[Another update: Boing Boing post about a new SF collection entitled Seeds of Change
