Malorie Blackman

you know, and so I think, and sadly, I mean, I must admit, I wrote it, and first of all, it was, well, is this going to get published, and is anyone going to read this, and I thought I'm going to get a right kicking for addressing the subject in the first place, and then I thought, and my dearest wish is actually people read this and think, oh, yeah, but this is a historical tract, I mean, this couldn't happen now, but unfortunately it's still relevant, and I mean, fortunately, and

Unfortunately and fortunately for me.

But it's still relevant because these things are still happening.

And there's still this thing of judging people based on their background or their religion or whatever.

And it just makes me despair.

Because I grew up with Star Trek.

I'm a Trekker.

I admit it freely.

I'm a nerd and a geek and all the likes.

I love it.

And I just think that I really...

buy into this thing of we get past our issues on this planet and then we can go and you know visit the stars but all of this nonsense about religion or color or you know whatever is is over and done with so I thought when I was growing up I thought yeah when we hit the 21st century it's going to be so brilliant going to change yeah exactly it will change and here we are in the 21st century and

we seem to be going backwards not forwards but i think the overall momentum is forward is forward and i i i have to keep believing that so you know and i think we will get there it's just unfortunately sometimes for every two or three steps forward we take we take a couple of steps back and i think yeah maybe we're at the end of that and we can start moving forward again let's hope so

I think so.

I think it's very easy to think that your sort of cohort of friends represents the world.

And it actively took me a while to kind of wrap my head around the fact that there are so many opposing views.

I mean, when I was, you know, in my teenage years, I thought...

I really thought all I needed to do is sit down and converse with people and I could change their minds about me.

It took a long time to realise that there are some people whose views are never going to change.

But that's not on me.