John Sladek quotes:
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See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.
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I have a kind of standard explanation why, which goes like this: Science fiction is one way of making sense out of a senseless world.
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I started writing, or rather, thinking, stories as a child, and at that time the reason was very clear.
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To my mind, the best SF addresses itself to problems of the here and now, or even to problems which have never been solved and never will be solved - I'm thinking of Philip K. Dick's work here, dealing with questions of reality, for example.
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People have laughed at all great inventors and discoverers.
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This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don't have much time to read; I hate to waste that time reading what may turn out to be junk food for the mind, when there's so much real writing to be read.
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Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.
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I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I'm sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection.
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We didn't have a phone when I was a kid, and I was too shy to smash any public phones, and our town didn't have a pool hall either, so I had to hang out at the public library - and anyway, I told myself stories.
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The problem and privilege we all have is being alive in this century and able to read this language. It makes any list meaningless except the list of an illiterate.
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The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.
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SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions.