A close associate of his gave an interview in which the book was described as quotes 'fiction from being to end'. I suffered trial by tabloid for a couple of weeks, lots of insults in the press, in the columns - this man should be put in the tower and so on.
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
Part of the joy of writing for kids is that you have to have a real adventure story. You can get really involved in the fantastic in a way that perhaps you can't so much in adult fiction.
The role of fiction is supposed to be divorced from the role of reality.
Science fiction offers an intensely bracing angle of view for writers to adopt, especially in a time of constant innovation and crisis, and it is a scandal that in 1999 so many writers have written it and continue to write it in obscurity.
I've always loved massive worlds, whether in fantasy or science fiction. I like the idea of making my own rules as well as utilizing everything that I love or inspires me. It's very freeing to know you can write a story that can be as big as your own imagination.
As far as characters in fiction that I really admire - it's pretty strong to say you would wish that you had created another character - but I'll throw out Will Graham, the protagonist in 'Red Dragon,' a book I've read several times.
The advice would be the same for any kind of fiction. Keep writing, and keep sending things out, not to friends and relatives, but to people who have the power to buy. A lot of additional, useful tips could be added, but this is fundamental.
In 'Cosmicomics,' I came close to science fiction - I was inspired by cosmological subjects and the workings of the universe and invented a character who was a sort of witness to everything that was happening inside the solar system.
One of the things that all authors of fiction must learn to judge is whether - and in what detail - to describe the face of a character.
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
The genres of the fantastic and the grotesque are far more interesting to me than most mnemonic fiction.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
I think any period in history can be adapted into interesting fiction, as long as you approach the actual history with respect.
I find myself, by happy accident, writing 'Young Adult' fiction. However, I dislike such categories.
I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies.
Imminent GM bankruptcy was always fiction, created by Wall Street and the media.
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
I love the fact that it's not only about Star Trek, but about science fiction in general, and science.
I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.
I've always been kind of a mutt creatively. I started off in journalism, and I've actually done more police and procedural shows than I've ever done science fiction shows. I was on 'Murder She Wrote,' I was on 'Walker, Texas Ranger,' I was on 'Jake and the Fat Man.'
I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
I finally decided one day, reading science fiction magazines of the time, I could do at least as well as some of these people are doing. So I finally made a serious effort.
As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I don't wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere.
I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.
I'm not a futurist, and my taste in science fiction was sort of in the gothic horror vein, not space movies and futuristic stuff.
Science fiction is about things that plausibly might happen. Grounding my work in the real world helps make that clear.
When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books.
I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand.
It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.
There are loads of sociopolitical, racial, class and future-planet situations that really interest me, but I'm not really interested in making a film about them in a film that feels like reality because people view that in a different way. I like using science fiction to talk about subjects through the veneer of science fiction.
The documentaries I made were never normal documentaries. They were about subjects I was obsessed with, and I suppose I thought I could sculpt them. What I think I do with my fiction is the same.
Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
I've always been a fan of science fiction.
So much emotion goes into writing fiction.
If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.
