Speaking in a noisy eatery, McCaffery and Benford discuss modern science fiction and the future of computers. They talk about modern and past culture, with Benford saying that the epic poem is now “fossil culture.” McCaffery and Benford discuss writing about human sexuality and good and bad characters. Benford says, “The best hard SF writers have considerable mystical content, because science has considerable mystical content.” He discusses the two strains in American fiction: “the frontier” (Robert A. Heinlein) and the “transcendental element.” Benford’s brother Jim arrives: “Two only children,” Greg says of identical twins. Greg Benford talks about writing for SF fanzines and being in fandom. McCaffery talks about the book for which he is doing this series of interviews, Across the Wounded Galaxies. Speaking of one of his books, Benford says he used a “Southern storyteller voice” like his grandfather’s, based on the “tradition of the South. ”McCaffery and Benford discuss the television show “Max Headroom” and the future of social and sexual roles, as well as genetic or evolutionary change. McCaffery asks when he began writing. “At first I just liked the idea of storytelling,” and then he saw that some things can be approached only “through a set of controlled lies, which is what fiction is, a method of lying.”
