To me, fantasy has always been the genre of escape, science fiction the genre of ideas. So if you can escape and have a little idea as well, maybe you have some kind of a cross-breed between the two.
What I perceive in science fiction is that it's more about how everything looks than what's going on, which I think is just difficult if you're an action character. I think they are about character, not about what it looks like.
I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.
It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all.
I was digging for stuff in a used bookstore, and I came upon 'Little Sister.' I fell in love with Chandler that night. I fell right down the rabbit hole of crime fiction.
One of the most interesting things about science fiction and fantasy is the way that the genres can offer different perspectives on matters to do with the body, the mind, medical technology, and the way we live our lives.
Author's Note: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Especially you Jenny Beckman. Bitch.
There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
My writing has always been what you call 'narrative fiction' in the sense that it's got very strong plots and twists at the end.
The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer's sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.
Fiction allows you to embody certain ideas and give them an emotional reality. The characters allow you to get close viscerally to an idea.
Granted, I'm more interested in technology than most people, and less interested in politics than most. But I don't like to think about categories. I really see myself as a general non-fiction writer.
You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties.
I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960's, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.
And I sense it was a rather constructed, almost half narrative fiction film in some ways. A lot of it was staged and manipulated to get those things in there that I knew to be strong.
The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
Never trust a fiction author. They spend countless hours making you believe in a world they created. They are among the best, most dedicated liars in the world.
The stories have been told so often by those of us who supported President Reagan over the years that they seem mundane, almost like a fictional novel or a movie script.
In fiction, the reader will make jumps with you. If you can make the reader make that leap with you, it's a thrilling moment for everyone.
That's why I have always admired documentaries, because they open windows that can make you understand much better where you come from, much better than fiction, I think.
Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German.
