Posthuman Blues

Child of the Diaspora: Bruce Sterling on J. G. Ballard

I mean, a book like Crash is like a guy who's studied hardcore porn, like bondage porn. The kind of porn where people are so trussed up in like ropes and bags that it's weirdly asexual, like latex porn, or one of these really extreme levels of fetishism that are close to mental breakdown. And he's thought: why doesn't someone do this with cars? That's an extrapolation. It's like saying, okay, given A and given C, given latex porn, what about people who have sex with car collisions? And in point of fact, there doesn't seem to be a reason why people couldn't get obsessed with car collisions. On the face of it it's like saying, given a car, why not a flying car - which is a very standard sci-fi extrapolation.

(Via Technoccult.)

I'm a rabid J.G. Ballard fan. I like Sterling, too. This interview is dynamite.