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" When I was 14, I spent a huge amount of time on the Internet, but not the Internet we know today. It was 1994, so while the World Wide Web existed, it wasn't generally accessible. Prodigy and CompuServe were popular, and AOL was on the rise, but I didn't have access to the web, and no one I knew had access to the web. "

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" What is a game like 'No Man's Sky,' really? A set of symbols that specify a world but do not themselves constitute it. A rich grammar that's inert without the trigger of human attention. "

Robin Sloan

Man

Attention

World

" It's not like 'Print versus Digital - only one will survive.' We live in a hybrid world now, and I think the near-term future is also hybrid. "

" I got a bike - a fixed-gear with bright blue wheels, custom-made to my specifications. I am a San Francisco techno-hipster, so this selection was a bit of a self-caricature. But sometimes the predictable thing turns out to be the best thing, too, and you can't let that stop you. "

" If a shop has a neon Superman logo in the window, I will enter. If it has a neon Superman logo in the window, a Bat-symbol next to it, and a dragon under the eaves, I am already inside. "

Robin Sloan

I Am

Window

" I think one of the most exciting things about the whole digital side of publishing is that it eventually allows you to operate at any length. That also means shorter stuff, too. "

" You can't think of technology as separate from all of our human drama anymore. "

" For me, writing in public is actually super energizing and so much fun. Especially when writing can typically be really painful and certainly hard, and often, you're staring at the page and thinking, like, 'Uh, is this any good? What am I doing?' "

Robin Sloan

Good

You

" I think I'm one of those people that kind of thinks everybody's got an identity, and maybe that's the core of their personality. But I think we change enough over the years that it's like a succession of different people. "

" There's certainly satire written about techies, but it's so snarky and snide and doesn't treat him as a whole person. The people I worked with at Twitter - they're very analytical, but they're also deep and thoughtful - I feel like they deserved a charismatic spokesperson. "

" I've never believed that Things Should Continue As They Are. "

" When you do something a little bit extreme or weird, it helps make it more interesting and more amenable to being written about. "

Robin Sloan

Interesting

Little

" I saw the short stories people were doing on Kindle and really liked the idea of seeing something I'd written on that screen. "

" If I look into my past, I was definitely into inventors. I was into stories of Edison and Tesla and da Vinci and all these guys making stuff in their garage. "

" I want to learn to weld. "

Robin Sloan

Want

Learn

" I love the web, but man, I look at my browser, and there are, like, twenty tabs up there, all jostling for space and time, all framed by a mosaic of other apps, other work, other entertainment... so even when I really am paying attention to something on the web, there's this peripheral haze. "

" The stimulation I get from my phone does not feel like the opposite of boredom to me. It actually feels like a different flavor of boredom... a twitchier flavor. And sometimes, it's almost more irritation than stimulation. It's an itch. "

" I liked the sort of YA classics. I loved 'The Chronicles of Narnia.' I loved 'The Chronicles of Prydain' by Lloyd Alexander, who is amazing. Basically, 'Chronicles of' - I was in. "

" People tend to think of the quest as a sort of fanciful or fantastical form, but actually, I think it's pretty realistic. I think that story of gathering allies to your side - recruiting your band of companions - actually matches the shape of most great careers, most great lives. "

" When you've biked only on quiet cul-de-sacs and college campuses, the idea of riding in the city, right up there alongside the cars, seems, frankly, pretty absurd. "

" 'Minecraft' is a game about creation, yes. But it is just as much a game about secret knowledge. "

" I was always a computer kid, and I grew up with the Internet and always found it fascinating. "

Robin Sloan

Always

Kid

" The vision of the Internet as a vast digital wasteland isn't correct. Everything is awesome, and we have more stuff to read than we ever have in history. "

Robin Sloan

Internet

History

" Books and technology are braided together and always have been. "

" When you're making a print book in 2012, I actually think the onus is on you - and on your publisher - to make something that's worth buying in its physical edition. "

" For so long, the model for writing has been, you sit in a room alone for a number of days or weeks or months or years and figure it out. But now, you don't have to do that; you don't have to be alone in the room anymore. "

" Prediction just means you saw where the world might be going: ho-hum. Influence, though - ah. Influence, direct and acknowledged, means you actually steered the world, even if only a tiny bit. "

" My parents live in northern Michigan, and every year, in the summer, we visit them for a few weeks. "

" When you close a tab or when you finish an article on the web, it's gone unless you go back into your history or search for it or explicitly try to find it. Apps on your phone have this special property: they hang around. In some ways, they're more like a book on a bookshelf than they are like web pages. "

Robin Sloan

You

Phone

" If you come from the Internet, as I do - I think of it as sort of my native country - there's a lot of great things happening on the Internet, but one of the things, one of the feelings you just can't escape is the sense that it's really hard to keep people's attention. "

" Doing research for 'Penumbra,' I read quite a bit about the early history of printing, and the more I did, the more it sounded like... the Internet today. There was crazy competition and upheaval; there were constant arguments about new techniques, new materials, new machines; and, of course, there were fortunes to be made. "