Where Has All the Science Fiction Gone?
Recent Campbell award winner John Scalzi lectures on the state of science fiction in a refreshingly unpretentious manner at a library in Covington, Kentucky (streaming WMV video over an hour long). As he says in his post on the subject, he's a bit fidgety and says "you know" a lot, but it's a good introduction to all the "whither science fiction?" arguments of the past several years, suitable for a general audience. One thing I like about it is that he covers the bases without just lapsing into the usual death-of-the-genre or everything-sucks-now handwringing.