Baber's interview is perhaps the most unusual in this collection as the interviewer does not discuss any of Wolfe's fiction directly. As such it provides an insight into Wolfe's general thinking about genre writing, materialist philosophy and Chicago.

BB: What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy?

GW: Plausibility, really. Science fiction is what you can make people believe; fantasy is what people have to suspend disbelief for. Many physicists believe that there will never be a faster-than-light drive – it's impossible. But you can make people believe in one, since they don't know much physics. And there are some physicists who believe it is possible. If you talk about somebody genetically engineering unicorns, it's probably fantasy, because people don't believe in it. But it's so close that you can almost touch it; we're almost at the point where we can make a unicorn.

So it's all a matter of plausibility. Do people think, ‘The future might be like this?’ If so, it's science fiction. If they think, ‘This could never happen’, that's fantasy.

BB: Magic realism?

GW: Magic realism is fantasy written by people who speak Spanish.

BB: Horror?

GW: Horror is all over the map. It's one of those umbrella things, where you can write any type of material with ‘horrific’ elements, call it horror and sell it as horror. Read the complete works of Stephen King, and you'll find fantasy written as horror, science fiction written as horror, horror written as horror, autobiography written as horror, and so forth.

BB: Why write books at all?

GW: The easy, cheap answer is, ‘To make money.’

BB: There are better ways to make money.

GW: Yes. If you're trying to make money you shouldn't do anything as chancy and hard as writing books.

The only real answer is that you can't help it. A real writer writes for the same reason a real songbird sings. Somehow it's in them to do it, so they do it. A human singer, for that matter, who can't make a dime singing, will sing in the church choir, sing at parties and sing every chance he or she gets. They like doing it.