They connect as friends (and lovers), post-therapeutic relationship, so admittedly on one level it is a kind of May-December relationship, but the epilogue, which is an interview with the now 130 year old woman, makes it clear that the relationship featured some enduring memories of love. Her psychiatrist, whose wife is leaving him, is in the older generation, but he also has some awareness of “alien contact” that allows him to be open to the young woman’s revolutionary views.

In particular, the younger generation focuses on a kind of (nineteen) sixties kind of polyamory sexual revolution, but there are also wider social issues addressed (briefly).Ī young woman is hospitalized by her parents for her sexual mores and also some apparent “hallucinations,” which is to say she is aware of extra-terrestrial contacts. A revolution is taking place in 2048, and a new generation is changing its approach to loving relationships and family. There are space alien contacts in this story, via some triangles some people see in the sky at night, not very well defined, but that isn’t that important, really, because the important focus in this story is on intergenerational conflicts. To say it is soft is to tie it to the humanistic tendencies of Ray Bradbury versus a “hard” science direction. The Interview is a “soft” science-fiction story set in 2048 in Italy.

The interview by manuele fior