SOURCE: “James Gleick: Speeding Toward the Millennium,” in Publishers Weekly, August 30, 1999, p. 44.

In the following interview, Starr provides an overview of Gleick's career and discusses Gleick's comments on his life and work upon the publication of Faster.

I really don't think of myself as a science writer, says James Gleick, one of the nation's preeminent practitioners in the field. Gleick, a former New York Times science reporter, columnist for the Times Sunday Magazine and author of two classic science books, is sitting on the deck of his house overlooking the Hudson River. The setting is pastoral, but Gleick seems more tentative than relaxed. He worries that readers will consign him to a single category—science—while he sees his own work as much broader than that. “Granted, I'm more interested in technology than most people, and less interested in politics than most. But I don't like to think...