People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy.
I did try to write fiction. I wrote 10 novels. And they were all just awful.
And I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, especially apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fiction.
Calling one thing 'literature' and another 'fiction' is a way to create status where there is none.
I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.
What does it say about a president's policies when he has to use a cartoon character rather than real people to justify his record? What does it say about the fiction of old liberalism to insist that good jobs and good schools and good wages will result from policies that have failed us, time and again?
I believe that hunger for a 'lost dimension' of experience is a natural yearning in all of us, and it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. It is evidenced among other places in the millions of children and adults who obsessively read the 'Harry Potter' books. It is said that fiction is where someone gets to tell the truth.
I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot.
I was standing on the shoulders of other science fiction writers like William Gibson, who had written 'Neuromancer' on a typewriter before home computers even really existed, and Neal Stephenson who wrote 'Snow Crash' in the early '90s and imagined an online virtual world before the birth of the modern Internet.
The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.
Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.
I hate science fiction.
There are works of fiction which seek to explain jihadi terrorists as the militant wing of Amnesty International. I don't buy that.
I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.
I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library - I'm a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction - so I'll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I'll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast.
The claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.
People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.
I've always believed in the power of rational thinking and behavior as the savior of the world, and science fiction as a powerful medium to encourage that, which explains my signature line, 'Let's save the world through science fiction.'
I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.
I just think that fiction that isn't exploring what it means to be human today isn't art.
Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.
I like a good fun chick-lit book as much as I like historical fiction, mysteries, or biographies, I like to be well-rounded!
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was younger.
Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.
I love science fiction. I read a lot of science fiction.
Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.
I think that fiction writers can write about anyone. If you are writing a character, and the only thing they are to you is their otherness, then you haven't written a character.
To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.
Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language.
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.
I think it's Jerry's masterful fiction writing.
'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner lives. That's an abstract idea; you don't think that's going to be a rocking work of fiction, but it seemed to fuse in a way that was interesting.
In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step.
For the serious biographer, history and the life story of a real individual are inseparably intertwined. Get the facts wrong, or distort them, and the life story gets distorted: becomes fiction.
