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" Science fiction has always used metaphors and disguises, talking about alien civilizations or the future. "

Robert J. Sawyer

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" 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

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" 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. "

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" In the best atheist sense of the word, I feel blessed. "

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" Hard science fiction, which is what I write, often is rightly criticized for having either negligible or unbelievable characterization, but the science I've actually studied most post-secondarily is psychology, and characterization is the art of dramatizing psychological principles. "

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" I really strived to give equal weight to the two halves of my genre's name: science and fiction. "

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

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" 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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" 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. "

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" One of the things that science fiction gets to do is thought experiments about the human condition that would be impractical or unethical to conduct in real life. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Everything that I can do to ground the story in reality helps make it harder for people to be dismissive of it. "

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" Sci-fi is just as much about social science as technology. "

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

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

Robert J. Sawyer

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" 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

" 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. "

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" If you like 'The Nature of Things,' or if you like 'Quirks and Quarks' you'll certainly like Lee Smolin's writing, and 'Time Reborn' is his latest nonfiction book, and it's an absolutely compelling read. It's worth the time. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" There's always been a quality to being a science-fiction reader. Usually, you're the only one in your class, or there are only one or two in your whole town. You're always the guy who reads that strange stuff. "

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" I am very pro-science. "

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" Once we no longer have the intellectual upper hand, then we quite literally, by definition, cannot outwit our successors. So unless we are absolutely sure that the machines we are building right now are not going to eventually become our new robot overlords, prudence is called for. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" My personal mission statement is to combine the intimately human and the grandly cosmic. I like to think that science fiction works on these two different scales. "

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

" Many science-fiction writers, such as Gregory Benford, are working scientists. Many others, such as Joe Haldeman, have advanced degrees in science. Others, like me, have backgrounds in science and technology journalism. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" A lot of people forget that the origin of science fiction in the U.S. was in the post-First World War period when there was a real interest to get people into technical careers. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" The fact we exist merely means we exist. That's all it means. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Psychopathy might lurk behind the mask of sanity. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" I'm a member of the Writers Guild of America and the Writers Guild of Canada. "

Robert J. Sawyer

" Social progress is a big thing for me. Although science fiction is traditionally concerned with the hard sciences, which is chemistry, physics, and, some might argue, biology, my father was and still is a social scientist at the University of Toronto. "

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" I'm often characterized as an optimistic writer, and certainly my 'Neanderthal Parallax' and 'WWW' trilogies shade toward the utopian. I like to think that's not simple naivete, but rather a reasonable approach. "

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" Bradbury was the one guy who was published in places like the 'Saturday Evening Post.' He was the guy who brought science fiction to the masses. If he hadn't existed, science fiction would have been a well-kept secret in literature instead of a widely consumed phenomenon. "

Robert J. Sawyer

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

Robert J. Sawyer