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825d936
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It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
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foundation
sf
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Isaac Asimov |
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d875f21
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Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.
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foundation
sf
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Isaac Asimov |
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cd7da28
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Some guys step on a rake in the dark, and get mad and go punch somebody. Others step on a rake in the dark and fall down laughing at themselves. I know which kind of guy I'd rather be. So do my friends.
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humour
friendship
comedy
sf
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Spider Robinson |
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9765059
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The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden.
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dawn
sf
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Roger Zelazny |
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d524b2f
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He turns off the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern.
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sf
science-fiction
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Neal Stephenson |
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fe140f8
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"Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?" "Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming."
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sf
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Roger Zelazny |
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da7f7f8
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Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.
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extraordinary
sf
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J.R.R. Tolkien |
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70c318d
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By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I - unused to your ways though I am - would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths. These are worth it. These are what I have come for.
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death
dreams
life
philosophy
sf
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Margaret Atwood |
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1ed1305
|
"How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values? The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes".
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women
writing
fantasy
femlae-agency
male-privledge
writing-femlae-characters
sf
genre
authenticity
sff
sexism
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Foz Meadows |
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bbaa2af
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"Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam. Dust off some of your old parables. You have about fifteen minutes.' Sam held out his hand. "Give me some tobacco and a paper."
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funny
religion
sf
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Roger Zelazny |
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53753bb
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"Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading--retellings of the old stories ( ), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds--and then I stumbled upon the books which took me back to and the like. I was in heaven when began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like , who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), and finally started reading science fiction after coming across 's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in . I'm as likely to read as as as
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reading
books
fantasy
book-genres
recommendations
sf
science-fiction
sci-fi
influences
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Charles de Lint |
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0ad73bc
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People talk about mainstream fiction and sf as though they were two quite different kinds of writing, and fantasy as well, as though it was quite different. But I think this a false distinction, that it is a labelling that helps librarians, and people who know the kind of thing they like and don't want their prejudices to be disturbed.
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sf
genre
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Angela Carter |
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c2d9a26
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It's--my God--like you stretched a tarp across a stadium to turn it into a giant tom-tom and crashed a 747 into it.
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sf
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Neal Stephenson |