Another interview with author Karl Schroeder

Blogger Armchair Anarchist has a fascinating interview with sf author Karl Schroeder up on his blog.

(We’ve blogged about Karl Schroeder before - you can read our post about another interview between him and John Scalzi here)

Asking you to wear futurist and author hats at once, what effect do you think the ongoing democratisation of publishing via the internet, print-on-demand technology, e-books and pod-casts and the Google Universal Library project having on the writing industry?

“Oh, it’ll destroy it. Twenty years from now I don’t expect to be able to make a living writing fiction. You know, this is related to Bruce’s comments about the end of futurism. The end of the SF writer as the primary producer of SF is around the corner. As I’ve said, SF has been appropriated by mainstream culture - it’s not ours any more. Ditto for publishing in general. There was only a brief period in history when one could make a living as a fiction writer, and it’s ending. - Except, of course, for stars like J.K. Rowling. They’ll get richer, the rest of us poorer. Since technology is legislation, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.”

Link to the interview (via Futurismic)