Author James Patrick Kelly is known for his award-winning and powerful short fiction, including such works as Standing in Line with Mr. Jimmy, Mr. Boy and Undone. His fiction is often concerned with issues of identity and humanity, how much transformation a person can go through and still remain essentially human. He has frequently had stories nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards, winning for 10^16 to 1 and Think Like a Dinosaur.

Early in his career he attended the Clarion Writers Workshop alongside a young turk named Bruce Sterling. In the last decade, he has been a regular instructor at Clarion where he has influenced and mentored young writers like Cory Doctorow. He is the long-time columnist on internet issues for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. In the mid 90's he adapted a number of his stories as audio plays for the SciFi Channel's Seeing Ear Theater online radio network.

In this interview, Jim and host Dave Slusher discuss the birth of cyberpunk as a sub-genre, how science fiction can help us face the future, the value of using the internet to distribute both written and audio fiction, and much more.