On John Scalzi’s Blog: The Big Idea

July 3, 2008 @ 11:34 am

As if telling Abigail Breslin to “suck it” wasn’t enough for one day, I am also on record praising Adolf Hitler in my “Big Idea” piece on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog. The piece is about the inspiration for my books Infoquake and MultiReal, and it’s not quite as offensive as it sounds. An excerpt:

Could Adolf Hitler ever have been the good guy?

The man was a warped, murderous bastard who ordered the slaughter of millions of people, started an unnecessary war of conquest, and permanently 86′d the dreams of an entire generation or three. But seriously — let’s say you hop in a time machine, track the dude down as a teenager, and put him through a serious reeducation program. And maybe give him a heavy dose of Prozac. Or better yet, hand him a Macintosh. Could he be redeemed?…

That was one of the Big Ideas behind my novels Infoquake and MultiReal. Create a character with Hitler-like strategic genius, with Gates-like business savvy, with Clinton-like personal magnetism, with Machiavelli-like disregard for ethics. Stick him on the fence between the ultimate selfishness and the ultimate selflessness, give him a technology that could revolutionize the world or destroy it, and see what he does.