October 23, 2009
For years Richard Powers has based his novels on challenging ideas and controversies from modern science. His latest is Generosity: An Enhancement -- Powers tells Kurt how he came to the story of an inexplicably happy young woman and the genetic engineer who wants her secret.
You describe Richard Powers as being on a one-man crusade, but he's not the first to explore the potential implications, both positive and negative, of scientific and technological change for human existence. A number of authors have done so over the past century or so, and the genre even has a name: science fiction.
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