SF Signal interviews Lauren Beukes, who recently won the Arthur C. Clarke award. Here’s an excerpt:
SFS: Why do you not address race directly in your books?
LB: I do. It’s there in every situation. It’s implicit, and that’s my experience of it, and that’s my friends’ experience. You know, it’s not something that always comes out in ordinary conversation. It’s just there. It’s omnipresent in society. No-one would ask a British novelist, why didn’t you bring in the council estates? Why didn’t you deal with the immigration issue? It’s because it’s part of the background texture. It’s always interesting to me when people worry about that, because it is there.
The World SF Blog 