Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe. — Paul Di Filippo Being crazy Copy Share Image
The clock indicates the moment-but what does eternity indicate? — Paul Di Filippo Clock Copy Share Image
“It was as unsatisfying as a handjob from someone wearing an oven mitt.” — Paul Di Filippo Science fiction Copy Share Image
The way I was educated, maybe from just inhaling something in the air back then, I grew up believing that E. B.… — Paul Di Filippo Air Copy Share Image
The term 'steampunk' itself, now a badge of honor, began as a putdown, a joke. But like 'Big Bang' in cosmology, the… — Paul Di Filippo Badge Copy Share Image
As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be… — Paul Di Filippo Books Copy Share Image
Its a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature. — Paul Di Filippo Books Copy Share Image
The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate. — Paul Di Filippo Dispassionate Copy Share Image
More than we sleep, play, or make love, we work. Yet despite - or perhaps because of - this dominant daily grind,… — Paul Di Filippo Because Copy Share Image
The juggernaut that is steampunk, like Dr. Loveless's giant mechanical spider in the 1999 film version of 'The Wild, Wild West,' seems… — Paul Di Filippo Capable Copy Share Image
That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy… — Paul Di Filippo Asking Copy Share Image
Writers begin changing the instant they append 'The End' to a novel. Readers begin changing the moment they encounter that same phrase.… — Paul Di Filippo Acquiring Copy Share Image
You could engineer a human to survive the greenhouse effect because you think that's what's going to happen, and then all of… — Paul Di Filippo Because Copy Share Image
Immensely clever and libidinously hilarious.The most astonishing thing about Love in a Dead Language is its ingenious construction. Insofar as any printed… — Paul Di Filippo Astonishing Copy Share Image
Any debut novel is usually a case of spitting into the wind - or, just maybe, casting your bread upon the waters.… — Paul Di Filippo Any Copy Share Image
War has always been a part of science fiction. Even before the birth of SF as a standalone genre in 1926, speculative… — Paul Di Filippo Always Copy Share Image
Of the birth of subgenres, there is no end. They arise like bubbles full of miraculous hopes and potentials from the Planckian… — Paul Di Filippo Alike Copy Share Image
Writing one's first novel, getting it sold, and shepherding it through the labyrinths of editing, production, marketing, journalism, and social media is… — Paul Di Filippo Arduous Copy Share Image
Blending consensus historical events and personages with imaginary occult forces is a strong recipe for counterfactual storytelling goodness that combines the best… — Paul Di Filippo Best Copy Share Image
Sure, theories of humor discern a few broad invariants: incongruity, misattribution, etc. But whereas I might find a blind date gone horribly… — Paul Di Filippo Blind Copy Share Image
Originating with such figures as T. H. Huxley, who sought to bring Darwin's ideas to the masses, the popular science genre moved… — Paul Di Filippo Accelerate Copy Share Image
What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write...… — Paul Di Filippo Able Copy Share Image
Some acts of worldbuilding in fiction instantiate a milieu that is so culturally odd and exotic, so displaced from the audience's consensus… — Paul Di Filippo Acts Copy Share Image
“Smellin' the beefaloes and leanpigs turnin' on their spits, holding a cold cheer-beer in my hand, watchin' the stars poppin' out one… — Paul Di Filippo Happiness Copy Share Image
Neil Gaiman has reached a masterful stage in his writing where he deserves his own adjective, which could be extended to younger… — Paul Di Filippo Adjective Copy Share Image
“Gaia giveth even as she taketh away. The warming of the global climate over the past century had melted permafrost and glaciers,… — Paul Di Filippo Cape cod Copy Share Image
Generational change within a genre is hard to parse while it's happening. Only in retrospect can the passing of the baton from… — Paul Di Filippo Ancestors Copy Share Image
The sentient beast has long been a staple of fantasy fiction and its antecedents in myth and folktale. — Paul Di Filippo Beast Copy Share Image
It's a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature. — Paul Di Filippo About Copy Share Image
Every new generation of SF writers remakes cyberpunk - a genre often laced with dystopian subtexts - in its own image. — Paul Di Filippo Cyberpunk Copy Share Image
Jeff VanderMeer's fiction has always been entrancingly, engagingly, enthusiastically weird, a winning combination of mimesis and the fantastical that privileges neither component:… — Paul Di Filippo Always Copy Share Image
The constituents of tragedy may be universally acknowledged, easily invoked and deeply felt, but the elements of comedy are, I think, more… — Paul Di Filippo Acknowledged Copy Share Image
Technically and logically speaking, actual Victorian science fiction writers cannot be dubbed 'steampunks.' Although they utilized many of the same tropes and… — Paul Di Filippo Actual Copy Share Image
Roald Dahl pioneered a new kind of literature for youngsters, one that dispensed with cant and solemnity, favoring anarchy and joy over… — Paul Di Filippo Acknowledging Copy Share Image
The SF genre, of course, is really an organically evolved, marketplace-determined, idiosyncratic grab bag of themes and signifiers and characters and icons… — Paul Di Filippo Bag Copy Share Image
“Madam, I assure you that you are dealing with two gentleman of the highest propriety and social standing. When one contemplates the… — Paul Di Filippo Copy Share Image
Thomas Pynchon surely inaugurated or crystallized a new genre in 1963 when he published 'V.' The seriocomic mystery or thriller with one… — Paul Di Filippo Baptism Copy Share Image
Ribofunk indicates a focus on biology as the upcoming big science in the way that physics was for the last 50 or… — Paul Di Filippo 100 years Copy Share Image
One posthumous measure of a person's life is how often you imagine his impossible return to deal with some event he never… — Paul Di Filippo About Copy Share Image
