Feeling the Powers

Mainly podcast recording with Robin and editing today. Off this evening to meet Innis who had tipped me off that Richard Powers was giving a talk at the Rialto theatre in Brighton. Met Innis in the Windmill pub of a cheeky first, and then went to the talk. Brilliant man, and a gifted communicator. He gave a 40 minute talk, semi autobiographical, about what had led him to writing his latest book, The Bewilderment, which I was given by Rosie and Innis for my birthday. The Overstory, his previous Pulitzer prize winning novel, I have as an audiobook, and have only just started. He is two years older than me, so his recollections of reading SF as a kid, and thinking about space, and what the year 2000 might be like, in the sixties and seventies seemed very familiar to me. He was talking about life on earth, and of course about how precious this is. He also talked about the consequences or otherwise of finding life in the universe not on this planet. Interested and engaged audience who asked him interesting questions. Felt buoyed by the event, as his position was about prompting a hopeful engagement with the future. 

Innis and I repaired to the Windmill to discuss what we had seen, and then I walked home. The Covid testing station gleaming mysteriously in Preston Park as I passed.