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" 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? "
Paolo Bacigalupi
React
How
Question
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" I think there are narratives going on all the time that we think of as tangential - up until they turn out to be deciding factors in our lives. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Going
Out
Think
" When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Ship
World
Writing
" As far as 'Windup Girl' becoming a hit - none of us expected that. 'Night Shade' was just hoping not to lose their shirts, and I had grown up hearing from everyone that science fiction didn't sell, so all of our expectations were very low. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science
Expectations
Girl
" As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers. You want these kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they're an escape. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Escape
You
Feel
" I know people who have gone into career death spins, and that's something you're always aware of as a writer. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
People
You
Always
" Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Need
Connect
Decide
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
World
You
Know
" The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Good
Place
Questions
" There are parents who are really angry that I decided to portray people who have come into the country illegally as decent human beings. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Parents
People
Country
" 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
" I am interested in agricultural corporations and how they function. The idea that they own the genetics of our food supply is a really compelling thing to me. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Me
Own
Genetics
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Think
Someone
Stories
" Mostly I sat down and said, 'I'm not going to write a boring story.' And that actually, surprisingly, solves most of your problems. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Problems
Down
Boring
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Story
You
Storytelling
" The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Lived
Man
Three
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Country
Television
Same
" I'm definitely writing my fears. It's almost therapeutic to at least voice a terror, to say, 'I'm worried that Lake Powell looks low and Lake Mead looks even lower.' "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Say
Low
Voice
" Originally, 'The Windup Girl' started as a short story - a very gnarly, complicated short story set in Bangkok that didn't work very well. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Girl
Work
Story
" When somebody keeps telling you, 'This book is amazing,' you sort of have this pleasing instinct to say, 'Oh, let me make you happy again; let me do that trick again.' "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Me
Book
Amazing
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Happy
Think
Personality
" When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future - those are science fictional questions. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science
Future
I Am
" The things that have really gotten confusing to me is how you balance the desires of your publishers to produce things on a schedule, and people are always sort of giving you ideas on what you should follow up with or how you should proceed next and things like that. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Ideas
People
Me
" 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
Me
" By nature I'm sort of an introvert. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Introvert
Sort
Nature
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
You
Grateful
Level
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Science
You
Writing
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Always
Work
Pretty
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Tourism
Low
Inside
" I was interested in political failure here in the U.S. The way we're failing to work together to solve even our smallest problems, let alone the complex ones. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Work
Together
Problems
" 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. "
Paolo Bacigalupi
Writing
Hide
Lie