Damien G Walter’s written a smashing profile of me for The Guardian, pegged to the UK release of Little Brother (hope to see you all at the UK launch at Forbidden Planet on Saturday!).
“The job of a science fiction writer, historically, has been to understand how technology and social factors interact,” he says, “how technology is changing society. An activist’s job is to try to direct that change.”
This time his message is aimed at the teenage readers who wear the kind of skater jeans and T-shirt combination Doctorow is sporting today. “If you don’t read the Anarchist’s Cookbook when you are 16 you have no soul,” he says. “If you are still reading it when you are 36 you have no brain.” (He himself is 37, but if he’s abandoned anarchism, he’s clearly not settling into a conservative middle age.)
“My hope is that Little Brother is a verb and not a noun, that it’s a thing you do, not just a book you read,” he continues. “That’s where thinking about the future and influencing the future converge.”
