(urth) barrington interview

[Gwern Branwen]

An interesting bit about the politics of _The Land Across_:

> Q: “The Land Across” is your newest novel. What did this book allow you to explore that previous ones had not?
>
> Wolfe: What I did in that book particularly was to take a tyrannical, political setup and show it from the inside: The reason that the people who were involved considered a dictatorship necessary. We seem to think of that sort of thing as an unmitigated evil. But democracy depends upon individuals being willing to contribute and take part in the democratic process.
>
> In other words, they have to look at the people who are running for office and in some cases running for office themselves and make reasoned judgments on the thing and then write letters and protest and so on. And if they are not willing to do that, if they resign from the whole process of government, then you can’t really get anywhere with a democracy. The democracy naturally lapses into some sort of a tyrannical setup.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net