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" One of the standard story-generating engines for science fiction is to take something we normally think of as metaphoric and treat it as if it were literal. "

Robert J. Sawyer

Science Fiction

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" I was paid more for the serialization rights for each book than I got as an advance for my first novel. In other words, there is an economic value in serialization in and of itself. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Whether it's created in a lab, written by a programmer, or lands on the White House lawn as a visitor from the stars, if it acts like a human being, it is a human being. "

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" The great thing about science fiction is that it transcends national boundaries. "

Robert J. Sawyer

Science Fiction

" A short story is the shortest distance between two points; a novel is the scenic route. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" I would love to write more about my hardboiled gumshoe on Mars, Alex Lomax. "

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" I think most people are indifferent in their evaluation of what is good or bad. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" What Bradbury had that most other science-fiction writers didn't have at that time was a love for beautiful language, evocative description, and haunting phrases that would stick with the reader. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" If you look at the United States, most of the country is pretty much uninhabited. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Real people are complex, contradictory, and have their own motivations - they can't just be mouthpieces for the writers' point of view. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" You can't be a 21st-century science fiction writer writing about Mars without doing tips of the hat to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Ray Bradbury, to H.G. Wells, to the guys who first put it in the public imagination that Mars was an exciting place. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Everything is cross-platform now. That's part of the reality that we live in - a multifaceted, multimedia world - and I'm delighted to be a part of that. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" I'm a fiction writer, and fiction is telling the lives of unreal people. But the only way you can learn to do that well is by really understanding the lives of real people. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" We're wired somehow to want to be part of something bigger. And we quest to understand what our role is. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" The heart and soul of good writing is research; you should write not what you know but what you can find out about. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" The only shows that Americans watch in big numbers are shows about lawyers, doctors, or cops... People don't tune in to watch scientists unless they are forensic scientists. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" The single best thing about Mars is the reduced gravity. It's 38 percent of Earth's gravity - about one third. Almost never have you seen that portrayed in film or television. Mars is just portrayed as a place that's got reddish sand but is otherwise pretty much identical to the Mojave Desert, and that's not the case. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" There were four major 20th-century science fiction writers: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. Of those four, the first three were all published principally in science-fiction magazines. They were preaching to the converted. "

Robert J. Sawyer

Science Fiction

" All the things that made us basically nasty, rapacious, competitive as a species are not necessarily hard-coded into whatever passes for the DNA of artificial intelligence. "

Robert J. Sawyer

Artificial Intelligence

" An agnostic is someone who believes the nature of the Divine is unknowable... and in that sense, I'm willing to subscribe to being an agnostic. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" The traditional route to success in science fiction is by making a name for yourself in short fiction, so people who read science fiction magazines will recognize your byline on a novel. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Science fiction is about things that plausibly might happen. Grounding my work in the real world helps make that clear. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" I started wondering why it is that people line up behind charismatic leaders. It's easy to understand the emergence of a figure who's narcissistic and compelling. But why people follow this person mindlessly - that was the hard question to me. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" A short story is one idea; a novel is a whole soup of them. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" It's possible that there is a guiding intelligence in our universe. I don't see a lot of personal evidence for an interventionist-on-an-individual-basis-deity. I have friends who very much do believe in that. But I don't. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Science fiction has never been about the future; it's always been about the present day whether it's Victorian England that Wells was writing about or the post-9/11 era that I'm writing about. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" I am very pro-science. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" The general public still thinks that science fiction has nothing to do with their day-to-day lives. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" I'm much more interested in writing about the things that engage and enrage me as an adult rather than in wallowing in childhood sorrows. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" We absolutely do some of the best science in the world in Canada, across a broad spectrum of disciplines: quantum computing in Waterloo, paleontology in Alberta, neuroscience at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health in Vancouver, and many more. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" When we have machines that are as intelligent - and then twice as intelligent - as we are, there is no reason why that relationship cannot be synergistic rather than antagonistic. "

Robert J. Sawyer