You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and this is bookworm. I'm here this week

with Ted Mooney, the author most recently of Traffic and Laughter. Fans of his first book have

waited nine years for it. His first book was easy travel to other planets. In that first book, within only several pages, a woman was making love

to a dolphin. Is it a dolphin or a porpoise? A dolphin.

A dolphin. And a jellyfish is making love to a plastic bag under the water.

Trying to eat it, alas.

But there are similar appetites.

And that seemed to be, give it its title, about at least a utopian vision of a possibility of an interface between species, whether with happy results or not.

This one seems to be a far unhappier novel. What brought you to it?

Interesting that you say that about happier or unhappy. Now, I feel neither one, there are many people who

thought the first novel was unhappy in its conclusion, which I won't repeat. I don't see the world

in unhappy or happy terms. And I can't say that one book is more hopeful than the other.

This one reinvents a bit of history and ends with a possible historical calamity, which

in truth has already taken place,

so it can't really be regarded as unhappy that way.

I feel strongly that my obligation as a writer is to show life as I see it,

and I don't see it as happy or unhappy. I see it as unpredictable

and lively until you're not lively, until it's over. Is it a goal to show life at all?

...