Ann Leckie Quotes

The ‘indistinguishable from magic’ thing is highly dependent on where a viewer is looking from and not something intrinsic to any particular sort of tech.

Occasionally, I hear grumbles about everything being a series or a trilogy, but apart from the question of them maybe selling more books, I think that there’s a real problem in trying to introduce a new world or a new concept while also getting your reader to pay close attention to your characters and themes.

I do realize the impulse to classify people by the food and art they consume is strong – sometimes I have to remind myself not to do that.

I tend to edit some as I go – partly because one of the reasons I don’t outline much is that I don’t know what the next scene will be until I’ve actually written the previous scene.

When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I’d work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I’d work on next, and then I’d panic.

If you can’t access it, all the resources in the universe won‘t do you any good.

I’ve been surprised at the number of people who were really angry that I tried to convey gender neutrality by using a gendered pronoun.

Does getting an award make you happy? When you imagine yourself at the ceremony, you’re always so eloquent and gracious. In reality, it’s kind of awkward.

I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.

I suspect that we get used to particular sorts of stories being presented in particular sorts of ways, and we’re so used to interpreting them and understanding what it is they’re doing that we think of those forms and styles as faithful, complete depictions of reality.

When I was a kid, I had no perception whatever that science fiction was supposed to be a boys’ club.

Fortunately or unfortunately, NaNoWriMo requires you to write at a breakneck pace, so I got used to just pushing on through.

Writing was something I always as a kid thought would be fabulous and glamorous to be a writer.

One day, I discovered that a couple of people had written ‘fanfic’ – stories of their own based on my characters. Just the thought of people thinking that hard and deeply about something I’ve written is incredible.

The ability to live for five hundred years would be an incredible gift. But I greatly fear it would be a gift only for the wealthy – one that might greatly widen the gap between those with access and those without.

I love science fiction, and one of the things I love about it is that it’s so very different. You can read stuff that’s just fast-paced adventure, and the characters are cardboard, but who cares, because they’re heroes, and we love it. And you can read stuff that’s really deep character, and everything in between.

I’ve always enjoyed making up stories, especially when I was bored and just sitting around. It got really serious after the children came along.

One of the awesome things about being a writer is that I can research nearly anything – tea? Bubblegum? Ants? Neurology? Chocolate? Textile production? It doesn’t matter. It’s all productive work.

The ’70s was a decade that was crammed with prominent women science fiction writers, and a lot of women made their debut in that decade or really came to prominence.

After about fourth grade, I do remember borrowing my mother‘s old portable Olivetti and typing stories out on the back of photocopies of journal articles.

Singing together is something human beings just do, and there are hundreds of years worth of just European vocal music available to read and hear.

I don’t think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

I do think that narrative is very important – I think that we use narrative to organize the world around us, and so it does matter a lot what kinds of narratives we have in our inventories and which ones are reinforced so often and so strongly that we habitually reach for them without thinking.

One of the nice things about a second book is that your readers already have so much of the introductions on board, they don’t have to put all their attention into figuring out the world and can more easily let that play out as a background to the other things you want to do.

Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding – the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame.

‘Star Trek‘ still – I’m kind of intrigued by the way that the standard foods of various non-humans are sometimes portrayed as downright disgusting.

‘Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell’ by Susanna Clarke is a big, thick book. About a thousand pages in paperback. I’ve heard several people say the size alone intimidated them.

Any attempt to list the ten best science fiction novels is doomed to failure.

When I need to get away from my desk, I tend to take walks or go places. I also like to bead – working with beads to make jewellery.

When I’m writing, I don’t really have much other guide than, ‘As a reader, how would I respond to this?’

Now, I personally enjoy a really good footnote.

What would it be like to live 500 years? Healthy years, of course; no one wants to live 500 years in a coma on a respirator. But reasonably healthy all that time? That would be awesome!

It’s a common part of the narrative of the history of Christianity that it was ‘real’ religion that involved real spirituality and real faith, and that’s why it’s completely superseded the more pagan polytheistic practices.

I’m one of those people who always wanted to be a writer, so I have a fair amount of juvenilia, though fortunately, I was too old for my juvenilia to be on the Internet.

Science fiction in particular is often assumed to be about the future, or about some abstract technological or philosophical idea, or just about ‘adventure,’ but writers can’t build worlds out of nothing. We use bits and pieces of the real world to assemble our fictional ones.