Here's a quick rule of thumb: Don't annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they'll do to you.
I had to forget a lot of 'Star Wars' when I was making 'Dune.' It wasn't hard, though.
I'm a big fan of science fiction, animation, and things of that nature. Other worlds and that type of stuff.
Lots of science fiction deals with distant times and places. Intrepid prospectors in the Asteroid Belt. Interstellar epics. Galactic empires. Trips to the remote past or future.
I've always loved far future SF, so it was more or less a given that I would one day want to write in that form.
Suddenly Star Wars came out while we were on hiatus, and we looked like the old Buck Rogers series, where they had cigarette smoke blowing out the back of the rocket ship.
'Star Wars' is a grand soap opera, and 'Star Trek' is about technology, they tried to explain the reality of it, as far-fetched as it might be. And that's why I've always liked the science behind the fiction.
I hope that 'House of Suns' functions as an independent novel.
I was really impressed by '2312.'
I used to love the 'Star Trek' movies, 'Wrath of Khan' and stuff like that. Loved those movies when I was a kid. And 'Star Wars' obviously was hands-down probably - I mean I had the sheets. I was a big fan of that.
I had - and continued to have - great fun exploring the Revelation Space universe, but it was always clear to me that I wanted to write other kinds of books, even within what might be termed the fairly narrow overlapping genre categories of hard SF and space opera.
Fantasy/science-fiction stories have been around almost as long as each genre, but every hybrid now lives in the shadow of 'Star Wars.'
I do like sci-fi. When I was a kid, I was always sort of locked into sci-fi stories. So, sci-fi has always had a special place in my heart.
