The SF Site: A Conversation With Ted Chiang

The SF Site: A Conversation With Ted Chiang: "In the recent book The Botany of Desire, author Michael Pollan describes how the advent of cheap sugar changed what we mean by 'sweet.' Before sugar was widely available, 'sweetness' described an unalloyed good, even a noble quality. Nowadays, it has far more mixed connotations, having been cheapened, almost debased, by sugar's ubiquity. It occurs to me that the same thing that happened to taste may be happening to appearance."