Paul Di Filippo Quotes

I've always thought of science fiction as being, at some level, a 19th-century business.

There is a certain degree of 'steampunkishness' that creeps into my books.

I've really loved steampunk for a long time, ever since 'Wild Wild West,' and it's always been a genre and an era that's fascinated me. But so often it's set in England, and that doesn't really resonate with me, or maybe it just seems a little overdone.

The term 'steampunk' itself, now a badge of honor, began as a putdown, a joke. But like 'Big Bang' in cosmology, the diss became the standard.

I used to be very fascinated by Victorian stuff, and my best-known books, the 'Mortal Engines' series, have a sort of retro, Victorian vibe, despite being set in the far future.

When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.

My first encounter with science fiction was reading the work of H.G. Wells when I was nine or ten, and I don't believe 'The War of the Worlds' or 'The Time Machine' have ever been bettered. Plus, I have always had a liking for Victorian and Edwardian clothes and contraptions, which tends to color the worlds I dream up.

To me, steampunk and urban fantasy are naturally hinged together. And I think that's because I love the early gothic Victorian literature, and both things spring from that movement.

I never, as a reader, have been particularly interested in dystopian literature or science fiction or, in fact, fantasy.

Steampunk, the repurposing of Victorian culture and technology for contemporary fun and profit, is so ubiquitous - in media, books, fashion, music, cosplay, and maker culture - that we tend to imagine its superficial aspects are all that define it.

A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.

I like certain subgenres within science fiction and fantasy, and one of those is urban fantasy, and another is steampunk.

As for genre, my adult books are usually filed under science fiction / fantasy, although some stores put them into romance, and few have stuck them into horror. I consider all my books a mix of steampunk and urban fantasy.

There are similarities between historical novels and science fiction. Being thrown into the Napoleonic Wars is just as much of a different world as space.

British and Canadian sci-fi strikes me as more forward-looking than its American counterpart, as evidenced by the success of Iain M. Banks, Charlie Stross, Robert Charles Wilson, and Cory Doctorow.

Hans Zimmer and I considered 'Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows' to be a steampunk genre; our inspiration came from Sherlock's own travels.

I certainly have been writing stories that are hard science fiction, that are very reminiscent of 'Golden Age tales' from the '40s and '50s. I've also written stories that are very high fantasy that are the direct opposite of that style.

I'm very picky with what I read. It's a specific genre of science fiction.

I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction.

Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.

War has always been a part of science fiction. Even before the birth of SF as a standalone genre in 1926, speculative novels such as 'The Battle of Dorking' from 1871 showed how SF's trademark 'what if' scenarios could easily encompass warfare.

Science fiction is becoming more of a diverse kind of genre.

Science fiction is a unique literature. Science fiction is the first literature that says, 'Tomorrow is going to be different than yesterday, it's going to be a lot different.'

Steampunk has been hovering around for a long while, and it's never really caught on in a big way.

Science fiction offers an intensely bracing angle of view for writers to adopt, especially in a time of constant innovation and crisis, and it is a scandal that in 1999 so many writers have written it and continue to write it in obscurity.