The other LitFest event I went to involved Nikesh Shukla interviewing Toby Litt on the subject of apocalypse fiction. Toby does actually destroy Earth in one of his books, but I’d better avoid too much in the way of spoilers.

Neither Toby nor Nikesh would describe themselves as science fiction writers, but they have both dabbled and both recognize the usefulness of SF. Indeed, Toby said very similar things to what Nick Harkaway said when I interviewed him for Salon Futura: namely that modern fiction has to be partly science fiction, and that much literary fiction fails precisely because it ignores technology entirely.

Had I been running the event, it would have said a lot more about different types of apocalyptic fiction, and why we use them, but I would probably have bored people stupid. Most of the crowd were there to listen to Toby and Nikesh, both of who, are very amusing. A fine evening was had by all (including Gaie Sebold and David Gullen who had stuck around after the Kraen Rises event).