In a public interview at MIT with Technology Review‘s Jason Pontin, the best-selling author talked about the obstacles faced by real emerging technologies, Technology Review Editors Blog reports.

Neal Stephenson worries that the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre’s ability to inspire engineers and scientists. Last year, he launched the Heiroglyph Project, with the goal of creating an anthology of plausibly optimistic science fiction.

Stephenson himself is contributing a story about a 20 kilometer high tower for launching spacecraft into orbit, based on a real engineering proposal.

We already have much of the fundamental technology we need to fulfill such science fiction ambitions as large scale solar power production, or routine space flight. Instead, he said, we need to start looking at the non-technological obstacles to these advances, citing insurance as a key example.