Jack L. Chalker Quotes

I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.

It's the imagination that is involved in sci-fi, and fantasy is what draws me to it. Stories, everything.

Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you're seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don't bother to read.

I haven't read a lot of science fiction, and I never intend to write it; it seems to happen a little bit inadvertently for me, in that I'm trying to follow people into points in their lives that demand that I investigate the future.

In a sense, fantasy is a freer play of the imagination. You can achieve exactly the situation you want with less groundwork, less of a need to fill in all of the background. For science fiction, I would use a lot of sources to set up, for instance, what a being from another planet would be like.

Fantasy and science fiction are my comfort spot.

If you're writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way.

Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.

The idea of science fiction, mythology, and creating a world is my favourite thing. I do love the reality of dramas and playing that, but being able to start from scratch, to completely build the character and this world, I love that.

Once the world has been created, the fantasy author still has to bring the story's characters to life and unfold a gripping plot. That's why good fantasy is such a hard act to bring off.

I read and write speculative fiction because I want to go someplace really different.

I've always loved massive worlds, whether in fantasy or science fiction. I like the idea of making my own rules as well as utilizing everything that I love or inspires me. It's very freeing to know you can write a story that can be as big as your own imagination.

In older science fiction stories, they had to rely on storytelling as opposed to spectacle. The old run of the 'Twilight Zone,' the star was the writing and the storytelling, and the characters and the twists and the cleverness in the setup and payoff and execution.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

I really can't write fantasy. I cannot invent a world which does not exist. And I can't read fantasy either. As soon as I realise I'm reading a book that hasn't got its roots in a reality I can comprehend, I switch off.

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

I've loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I'd try my hand at it at some point.

I played lots of fantasy games. I would create these worlds, and I would believe in them.

I like making stories and characters that people can relate to. I also like giving the audience a departure from whatever they're thinking about in their life and enjoying a show or a movie.

I've spoken often of how the fantasy genre is able to, with the greatest freedom among all the genres, take a metaphor and make it real. But of course that's only the starting point.

When I write my books, actually, I'm known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction.

I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.

I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn't have the mentality.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

In any genre you're working in, you can always find a way to tell a particular kind of story. I love fantasy; I love science fiction. I love all kinds of fiction, in fact.