Literaturschock: Mr Brin, if you look in the mirror and into your own soul, what would you see?

David Brin: A flawed ape, with many delusions... including the idea that we can improve each generation of man.

No man will go to heaven if he is judged by his thoughts. We must judge ourselves based upon our actions. Upon leaving a better world.

Literaturschock: I know, you are asked almost every question again and again but is there any question you are never asked, but you wish people would ask you?

David Brin: David Brin, how did you get so unbelivably sexy and charismatically handsome?

Literaturschock: What do you think is the most difficult and the easiest thing about writing?

David Brin: Finding time to write. That is hard when you have children and when you have a public speaking career. The writing itself is shamefully easy. I say that because I was an engineer and scientist and teacher... all of them much harder than writing is for me. Especially teaching.

For me, ideas and words and feelings flow like a storyteller sitting around a tribal camp fire. Many artists pretend it is hard in order to make other people feel awe toward them.

Literaturschock: You are very interested in our environment (see http://www.davidbrin.com/livingplanet.html). Do you have a (perhaps crazy or absurdly) vision, how every one of us could protect the environment better?

David Brin: We all need to read more science fiction. This good stuff, in the best novels by Greg Bear and Kim Stanley Robinson. The futures that those novels discuss... some of those futures we must ponder in order to prevent them with every effort we can give. Other futures may be worth fighting to bring about.

Literaturschock: During the Oscar award there was an eclat yesterday, when Michael Moore attacked George W. Bush in his speech again. The whole world is against this war but no politician is impressed by that. I would not like to make politics, but I would like ask you: How do you feel at present? What do you feel?

David Brin: I have no objections to correcting the terribly cynical mistake that George Bush Sr. made in 1991, leaving a mass-murderer in charge of Iraq. I just wish these people would admit that they foolishly created the problem in the first place.

There is nothing wrong with freeing 23 million Iraqis from a genocidal tyrant. Today the world has only one recourse against men such as Saddam, and that recourse is Pax Americana.

What I find offensive about this war is the way President Bush is doing it... stomping on the feelings of every ally, calling in every favor that America has earned in 60 years, destroyintg the Western Alliance and offending every friend, when there are so many easier and less volent ways to get rid of Saddam. It is so clearly being done this way for the sake of political theater.

Nevertheless, even though I dislike the clumsy and excessively violent nature of this police action, I want the rest of the world to think. If you don't like Pax Americana, first admit that it is far better than any preceeding empire. And now, (yes!) it is time to replace empires with law, at long last. Something like real ilaw for Planet Earth. Not law for the convenience of tyrants, that respects their right to brutalize their people, but law that people can use against tyrants. Let us start the conversation! Come up with a plan that would free slaves like the Iraqis from their monsters.

I will work with you. Many Americans will.

But until then, you need Pax Americana. The alternatives are far worse.

I wish PA were better led, right now. I am ashamed of certain aspects. But many of the critics are offering nothing better.

And if the answer I have just given does not fit into any standard "left vs right" profiles... GOOD! The left-right political axis -- that nobody can ever define -- was the worst curse ever given to us by the French Revolution. It cripples openminded thinking. Anyone who enslaves himself or herself to that stupid model does not belong in adult conversation about saving the world.

Sorry I got carried away there. You see, in science fiction we learn to think about hundreds of years. It is time to stop thinking about now and start thinking about how the world will be governed in the future. That conversation must start. and it must include ways to free all people from tyrants.

Good luck to you... and all of us!.

Literaturschock: Thank you very much for your time, Mr Brin!

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