Speaking before a packed lecture theater at MIT yesterday, Neal Stephenson worried that the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre’s ability to inspire engineers and scientists. Describing himself as a “pessimist trying to turn himself into an optimist,” and acknowledging that some of his own work has contributed to the dystopian trend, he added “if every depiction of the future is grim…then it doesn’t create much of an incentive to building the future.”

Consequently, Stephenson is trying to make a literary course correction…

Well, since he ruined it for everybody, I suppose it would be his job to fix it too.

Imagine being that influential. What a burden!

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UPDATE: Just to be clear, this is a cynical blog post pointing out that NS’s lack of personal humility is annoying.