“Consensus wisdom has it that all modern commercial fantasy novels fall into two camps: those derived from J.R.R. Tolkien and those derived from Mervyn Peake. The 'Lord of the Rings' template or the 'Gormenghast' mold.”
“Consensus wisdom has it that all modern commercial fantasy novels fall into two camps: those derived from J.R.R. Tolkien and those derived from Mervyn Peake. The 'Lord of the Rings' template or the 'Gormenghast' mold.”
Paul Di Filippo
“Consensus wisdom has it that all modern commercial fantasy novels fall into two camps: those derived from J.R.R. Tolkien and those derived from Mervyn Peake. The 'Lord of the Rings' template or the 'Gormenghast' mold.”
Paul Di Filippo“Once anthropology and geology had opened up the pre-recordkeeping darkness of humanity's long, slow, sustained infancy as suitable grounds for speculation, writers began trying to imagine human existence as it must have been with only stone-age technology.”
Paul Di Filippo“The three touchstones that woke Buddha up - sickness, old age, and death - are a pretty good place to start when crafting a tragic tale. And if we need to get more specific: heartbreak, destruction, miscomprehension, natural disasters, betrayal, and the waste of human potential.”
Paul Di Filippo“Stephen King consummately honors several traditions with his rare paperback original, 'Joyland.' He addresses the novel of carny life and sideshows, where the midway serves as microcosm, such as in those famous books by Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney and William Lindsay Gresham.”
Paul Di Filippo“It was not until the appearance of cyberpunk in the 1980s that SF began to grapple in a broadly meaningful way with the reality of computers as something other than giant mainframes tended by crewcut IBM nerds.”
Paul Di Filippo“Quite often, intent on conveying how things can go wrong for a culture (science fiction) or an individual (horror) or all of magical creation (fantasy), works of fantastika often preclude comedy, because humor gets in the way of messages of doom or struggle.”
Paul Di Filippo“That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.”
Paul Di Filippo, How To Write Science Fiction“The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate.”
Paul Di Filippo, How To Write Science Fiction“As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored.”
Paul Di Filippo, How To Write Science Fiction“Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.”
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