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" As a kid, I always liked reading stories where I had a power-projection fantasy. I wanted to be inside of a story where I had power and influence, was going to rise to power, was going to somehow influence my society. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Rise

Power

Influence

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" Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative. "

" By nature I'm sort of an introvert. "

" Sometimes when we label something dystopian fiction, I feel like we're trying very hard not to use the words 'science fiction,' because science fiction has those horrible connotations of rocket ships and bodacious babes. "

" I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Change

Ideas

" Maybe storytelling belongs in audio - a short story is the length of a commute. That can be a sacred spot where you have the ear of the reader without having to compete with other media like games or TV. "

" I think the fact that we, as writers, don't engage with resource-level questions is a symptom of our society where we just don't know where our stuff comes from. "

" We're all happier when we know less, because the details are frightening and haven't really improved much. The more you pay attention, the more horrifying the world is. "

" Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids. "

" I think inherently, a little bit, I'm a bit of a pleaser, and I want people to like me and be nice, and to not ruffle feathers and just make everybody happy and stuff. It's a personality flaw. "

" I'm interested in how we react when we're heavily pressed. When we're vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave? "

" As an author, you're really grateful for the people who are supporting you, but on some other level, that can be a dangerous echo chamber. "

" The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Young

Fantasy

" Economies are embedded inside ecosystems. Companies dependent on tourism, for example, are affected by low rainfall - there's less snow for skiers, and forest fires are more intense. "

" I didn't think of myself as writing 'cli-fi,' but I'll take the label. I'll take any label that makes someone think they might be interested in my stories. "

" When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories. "

" Originally, 'The Windup Girl' started as a short story - a very gnarly, complicated short story set in Bangkok that didn't work very well. "

" The sources and research I use for my inspiration aren't your typical sci-fi subjects, but it's really driven by obsession and personal anxiety more than trying to take up the sword and do what's right. "

" Science fiction has these obsessions with certain sciences - large scale engineering, neuroscience. "

" Everyone in China knows The Topics. The television stations and newspapers run the same state-generated stories all across the country, and the Chinese form their opinions based on these somewhat controlled sources. "

" All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought. "

" I started really thinking a lot about where does a country go when we stop being able to speak to each other, when a nation stops being able to solve problems because its ideological differences become so deep that it just becomes dysfunctional. "

" I used to work for a newspaper that covered local resource issues, and my coworkers and friends were journalists. Their reporting work was always pretty grim. "

" The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take. "

" I think that, when I think about the future that 'The Water Knife' represents, it's one where there's a lack of oversight, planning and organization. "

" There are parents who are really angry that I decided to portray people who have come into the country illegally as decent human beings. "

" The conclusion I came to was that even if I couldn't sell books, I still liked the process of writing. "

" My conception of my ideal reader has expanded quite a lot as I've matured: Ultimately when I think of my ideal reader, it's someone who's not sitting down with the intention of automatically arguing with the book: somebody who's going to give me enough slack to tell my story. "

Paolo Bacigalupi

Enough

Story

" The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province. "

" I'm less crazy and unhappy when I'm writing. "

" I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works. "