“I think the role of science fiction is not at all to prophesy. I think it is to tell interesting, vivid, strange stories that at their best are dreamlike intense versions and visions of today.” ThinkingStoriesTodayInterestingFictionVisionRolesStrangeScience FictionIntenseVersionsVividStrange Stories Author:China Mieville
“If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.” IfsKnowsWayYearsMeanCountryFactsStoriesFeelingsMemoriesFictionHappenedFindingsDistanceDetailsVersionsBeing TrueConquerParadiseWildernessTransformedSad Story Author:Jayne Anne Phillips
“One of the things that makes characters real is details. Life offers a lot of details. You just have to choose and use them wisely. When you give them to fictional people and a fictional story, their purpose and their meaning changes, so it's best to see the version in the book as fiction entirely, wherever it started out.” PeopleGivingBookRealCharacterStoriesUsePurposeFictionOffersDetailsVersionsFictional Stories Author:Nick Earls
“I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.” WritingYearsStoriesUsedMy OwnFictionHorrorScience FictionComplicatedTalesVersionsShort StoryTeensHoodRobinsRobin HoodComplicated Things Author:Peter Robinson
“History - the non-fiction version - must inform the fiction to make it truthful; too much of it and your genres are colliding.” FictionToo MuchVersionsGenreTruthfulNon Fiction Author:Jon Weisman
“I think that is one of the things that is beautiful about fiction and that you can do through drama. If I was a detective, I could make a certain version of everything we know to be exactly true. And that would have a certain kind of truth value. And there are certain other things that we know that are emotionally true.” IfsThinkingKnowsKindBeautifulCertainValuesCan DoFictionDramaVersionsDetectives Author:Liza Johnson
“For me, fantasy and speculative science fiction are the genres that feel closest to how I feel about being alive. Like, when I feel the most invigorated by just even a walk down the block in twilight, when the street lamps are just coming on and there's mist and some shadowy thing in silhouette in a window, I naturally invest all of those things with deep mythology and mystery and meaning. I think I need to believe in that version of reality because I get very scared when I don't.” ThinkingNeedsFeelsBelieveRealityWalksFictionFantasyAliveMysteryStreetsWindowScience FictionScaredMythologyVersionsBlockGenreTwilightClosestLampsMistSilhouettes Author:Brit Marling