Pat Cadigan is an American author who now lives abroad in England. She is most well known for her cyberpunk-themed science fiction stories, and has published both short stories and novel-length ficiton. She is a multiple Hugo and Nebula award nominee, and a two-time winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award. You can find her online at LiveJournal and Twitter.

Please share your perceptions of F/SF from when you first entered the publishing industry vs. the present state of things. If you haven't noticed any major changes since your first work was published, could you touch on whether or not your perceptions of the genre(s) changed once you went from a genre fan to a contributor?

The kind of story set on other planets has definitely changed a lot, or at least the telling has. It seems to me this is the case, anyway. As real-world knowledge has advanced, sf has changed to reflect those things. E.g., if Ray Bradbury were trying to market The Martian Chronicles today, he'd be out of luck. If he changed it to The Jupiter Chronicles or The Titan Chronicles, he'd still be out of luck. And yet, The Martian Chronicles remain a classic of our genre because they are so beautifully written. We know that they draw on what little we knew at the time. Eventually, our world may change so much that The Martian Chronicles will be identified as steampunk--if they aren't already.

Who or what is missing, saturated, or underrepresented in F/SF today?
ZOMGWTFBBQ, can you say "vampire romance"? They're calling it urban fantasy but my definition of urban fantasy is much bigger than vampire romance. It's like Joss Whedon and Ann Rice mated and had kids who all write books about smart, sometimes sassy, sometimes ethereally loner women having decadent sex with vampires and werewolves who are all so excruciatingly beautiful that a mere mortal could implode of desire just by looking at them. Memo to kids: There was only one Buffy--get over it.

What are your favorite F/SF resources (books, websites, people)?
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "resources". But I'm old enough to have been working before we had the Web and after. After is better. If I can't find exactly what I need on the Web, I can find out where to go so I can get it. All my research begins on the Web. It doesn't always end there but as I said, if I can't find it, I can find out where it is.

Now that technology has caught up to many concepts in '80s and early '90s cyberpunk, do you see a role for that sub-genre in today's market? Are cyberpunk themes still relevant today?
The spirit of cyberpunk is still relevant today but cyberpunk as it was--well, no one would write those stories today because it's an entirely different world. And this is because science fiction isn't really about the future--it's about the present in which it was written. The spirit of cyberpunk is the spirit of punk itself--dissatisfaction with the status quo, a reminder that just because everything's all right for one group of people, it doesn't mean everything's all right, period. We'll always have that, or at least I hope we will, because we need it.

Has the mainstreaming of the internet changed your approach to promoting your work and connecting with fans? What changes, if any, have you seen in the publishing industry due to widespread internet usage?
Well, it's easier to connect with fans--and easier for them to connect with me. E.g., I have over 800 friends on Facebook--obviously, not all of them are people I know. Many of them "friended" me saying they were fans of my work. That's rather nice. I hesitate to make any statements about the publishing industry--I'm not an expert in the area of business. However, you've probably heard that Orion just paid Alastair Reynolds £1 million for a 10-book contract--good news for Al Reynolds, of course, but also good news for all of us who write. This is a major act of faith in science fiction--Orion is saying to the rest of the publishing world that they believe this is a wise investment that will bring a good return for them. I.e., science fiction is good business.

(Author photo by Scott Edelman, used with permission)