95bFM: The Wednesday Wire with Paul Deady

95bFM: The Wednesday Wire with Paul Deady

The bFM WIRE Today: 12 - 2pm weekdays

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A very special edition of the Wednesday Wire today, one for book lovers everywhere! With the Auckland Writers and Readers festival kicking off tomorrow evening,bFM has put together our own special programme featuring six authors set to grace these shores. Myself, Jose Barbosa, and bFM book correspondent Sally have been underlining, dog-earing , and book-marking hard over the last week to bring you an insight into the minds of the authors tackling subjects from Pakistan to quantum physics, child discipline to teen reads, German history to forecasting the coming century. So sit back, brew a pot, and be prepared to have your mind well and truly blown.

1210 - George Friedman

We begin the show at 1210 with George Friedman. He's an American political scientist and author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporationStratfor - sometimes known as the "Shadow CIA". He has authored several books, including America's Secret War, The Intelligence Edge, The Future of War, and most recently The Next 100 Years.

In that book he charts the course of the 21st century, guided by the philosophy "be practical, expect the impossible". He forecasts United States dominating the coming century, brushing aside Islamic terrorist threats now, overcoming a resurgent Russia in the 2010s and 20s and eventually gaining influence over space-based missile systems that Friedman names battle stars.

We talked about these forecasts, why intelligence does a better job than journalism, and why he's unwilling to bet against his preconceived notions of humanity.

1230 - Christos Tsiolkas

Then at half past 12, shifting gears somewhat, we'll hear from Christos Tsiolkas who burst onto the literary scene in 1995 with the novel Loaded, and in 2006 won the Age Book of the Year fiction award for Dead Europe. His latest novel "The Slap" is making huge waves in his homeland of Australia, and is a contender for the Commonwealth Prize being awarded at the festival on Saturday.

The Australian called The Slap "a perfect social document of what Australia is today." The book centres around a single incident - a friend slapping another friend's child at a barbeque - and springing from there, explores generational, cultural and societal differences in a funny, dark and at times brutal Australia. Migrants and their offspring dominate the huge cast of characters, which Christos told me reflects a realistic representation of modern Australia, but which also reflects the authors remarkable ability to convincingly speak in so many different voices.

Chris spoke to me about exploding the myth of what Australia truly is, the joys of being a 17 year old girl, and how the dark yet prosperous decade under Howard hasn't changed much under the Rudd's new government.

1250 - Stefan Aust

Up until last year Stefan Aust spent fourteen years as the editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel. However he got his start in the student media in the 1960s where he came to know some of the people who would go on to form the Red Army Faction. Otherwise known as theBaader-Meinhof Group the RAF was a militant left anti-capitalism group opposed to the German government which they saw as corrupt. They’re notorious for the murders ofJürgen Ponto, the head of Dresdner Bank and the industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer in 1977.

The leaders of the group at the time were in prison. All four died supposedly at their own hands, but theories remain that they were murdered in a extra judicial killing by the state.

Stefan Aust wrote The Baader-Meinhoff Complexin 1985, and it's considered to be the seminal work on the group. Since then however he’s added more research to the book resulting in multiple editions and a film was made last year by German film makerUli Edel. Josétalked to Stefan about the group and its impact on German society

1310 - MT Anderson

MT Anderson is one of the most ambitious writers for young people at work today. Dubbed “the David Foster Wallace of young-adult fiction” by literary blog The Millions, Anderson has also been compared to Mark Twain and Herman Melville in the sheer scope and drama of his writing.

Anderson won the National Book Award in 2006 for the first part of his epic novel The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, a book The Washington Post calls “an ultra-challenging, two-volume novel filled with grimness and archaic language that runs 900-plus pages and asks teen readers to contemplate the American Revolution from the point-of-view of an African slave boy.”

Sally spoke to Anderson about the difficulties and advantages of writing for teens, the role music plays in his work and his thoughts on literary festivals.

1330 - Mohammed Hanif

Another author in the running for the Commonwealth prize is Mohammed Hanif. His much-acclaimed debut novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes has been praised for it's bitterly humourous take on the political environment of Pakistan in the 1980s. Pakistan-born and based Hanif writes a fact-based farce spun from the mysterious 1988 plane crash that killed General Zia, the dictator who toppled Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto. The book has been compared to Catch 22. Moreover, the author himself served in his nation's air force for several years, and has been surprised at the book's reception in his homeland - where some in the military have asked him "how did you know"?

On top of all this literary acclaim, Hanif wears many other writing hats. He's a long-time journalist, who heads the BBC's Urdu office, and he's also written for the stage, the screen and longs to write the songs for your ipod.

He told me how these different disciplines feed into each other and how refreshing it was to leave behind the confines of journalism to write fiction.

1345 - Marcus Chown

Formerly a radio astronomer and currently the cosmology consultant for New Scientist, Marcus Chown has made his name explaining the grander ideas of science to the masses. In his first book Afterglow of Creation Chown examined the discovery of cosmic background radiation; in The Universe Next Door he posed several questions such as can time run backwards and is there a multiverse? In his latest project Chown examines the mysteries of the quantum world in Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: A Guide To The Universe. In this interview José talks to Chown about the apparently impossible attributes of the quantum world and learns some hard truths about quantum computers.

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