Den här måndagen träffar vi Paolo Bacigalupi som förra året kom från (nästan) ingenstans och hamnade med sin debutroman ”The Windup Girl” på Times lista över 2009 års tio bästa böcker.

What are you reading at the moment?

”Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military”, by P.W. Singer — I’m really interested in the privatization of government services generally, and military privatization is so fabulously perverse that I couldn’t resist this one.

”Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History”, by Douglass C. North
I’m interested in why societies tear themselves apart, and how they manage to fix themselves (or not). This is no surprise, I’m sure, considering the kinds of stories I write.

”Doubt is Their Product”, by David Michaels.
I’m interested in how corporations conduct information warfare to manipulate democracies. I think there are big implications for our future in the dynamics that Michaels describes.

How important is reading and books in your life? Has it changed over the years?

When I was growing up, reading used to be important for entertainment and escape, and I mostly read fiction. These days, I read so that I can better understand how the world works, and to inform my own writing, and it’s almost all non-fiction. Somewhere in the process of learning to write, I lost some of the fun of reading stories. Sometimes I re-read a book, because it feels familiar, but I think I’m just remembering the way I was when I first read the book, rather than actually engaging with it. Though, I did re-read ”Dune” recently, and was astonished the layers of ecology that inform that book, and which I apparently skimmed over when I was younger.

Which are your favorite SF authors and why?

I don’t think much in terms of favorites. I like William Gibson for his style. I remain enamored with George Orwell and Aldous Huxley for their fabulous blueprints of dystopia. I read Neal Stephenson for the whirl of ideas. I still look back at Ursula LeGuin’s ”The Dispossed”, because she showed me how a story and political theory can mesh.

Three books you couldn’t live without?

I’m not that kind of person. I couldn’t live without my wife, Anjula. Books are just things. I read them and give them away. Probably a better measure of the books I love is the ones that I keep buying and giving away to other people. I’ve always loved to give ”Understanding Comics”, by Scott McCloud away to my friends. It’s a comic book, that describes the artistic theories of comic books. Genius. I also give away ”All The Pretty Horses”, by Cormac McCarthy a lot, just because his prose in that book seemed particularly strong and I like to share it. I also keep giving away ”Cryptonomicon” by Neal Stephenson, but then I buy it again because of the Captain Crunch scene, and the Dentist, and all the other quirky digressions of the book. I always like to dip into that one again, and then give it away, again.

Can we expect a follow-up to the ”Windup Girl”?

There won’t be a sequel. I think I’ve covered the ideas that were necessary with that story, and I’ll probably let it be. I’ve got a Young Adult novel called ”Ship Breaker” that will be appearing in May, which focuses on sustainability and global warming and peak oil, but from a different set of angles. After that, I’ve got a bunch of other projects that I hope I’ll be completing in the coming year, but they’re all secret.

Jessica Björkäng