British author McDonald’s outstanding SF novel channels the vitality of South America’s largest country into an edgy, post-cyberpunk free-for-all. McDonald sets up three separate characters in different eras—a cynical contemporary reality-TV producer, a near-future bisexual entrepreneur and a tormented 18th-century Jesuit agent. He then slams them together with the revelation that their worlds are strands of an immense quantum multiverse, and each of them is threatened by the Order, a vast conspiracy devoted to maintaining the status quo until the end of time. As McDonald weaves together the separate narrative threads, each character must choose between isolation or cooperation, and also between accepting things as they are or taking desperate action to make changes possible.
Interview with Ian McDonald, author of Brasyl.
We discuss what Brasyl is about; which part of the triptych came first and how he wove in the other two braids of the story; his previous novel, River of Gods; Suba’s São Paulo Confessions; pitching reality television programs like his protagonist, Marcalina Hoffman; Moacyr Barbosa, the man who made Brazil cry; John Hemming’s book, Red Gold; Jean-Babtiste Falcon, inventor of the earliest computer?; themes of exploitation; my interview with Lou Anders, editor of Pyr; the pressure of the expectations to have all his future novels take place in “exotic” locations; why he avoided writing about Carnival; reviews of Brasyl in Brazil; how Ireland has become boring; programs that his character Marcalina pitched and developed htat he might have enjoyed watching; how the Q-blades in Brasyl work.
Featured song is “Fiorina” by Lu Horta.
Download:
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://smallworldpodcast.com/mp3/smallworld060207.mp3small WORLD Podcast website:
http://smallworldpodcast.com/?p=596
