Miraculous 24 Selected Quotes By - Alastair Reynolds

Miraculous 24 Selected Quotes By - Alastair Reynoldse

Science fiction writers aren't short of ideas. You can read a book, and it sets off a chain of thought processes, so it becomes a response to other people's books.

— Alastair Reynolds

When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader.

— Alastair Reynolds

I'm not actually that bothered about the 'science fiction-ness' of 'Doctor Who.'

— Alastair Reynolds

I would much rather we concentrated on the immediate, still-potent dangers, such as nuclear weapons, runaway climate change, and so on. Sort those out, then worry about Hal 9000.

— Alastair Reynolds

I'm not massively fond of right-wing nutters or war criminals.

— Alastair Reynolds

When I was a kid, I was reliably informed that we'd have gone to Mars by 1985, and of course it's 2012, and we're still really no closer to a human expedition to Mars, but that shouldn't detract from the amazing achievements that are being done on a day-to-day basis by robotic envoys.

— Alastair Reynolds

I was really impressed by '2312.'

— Alastair Reynolds

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.

— Alastair Reynolds

Daleks scared the hell out of me, to the point where I wouldn't go round to another boy's house because he had Dalek wallpaper in his bedroom.

— Alastair Reynolds

I am playing in a playground that's already been played in. I am always aware that a lot of the furniture in science fiction is second hand.

— Alastair Reynolds

I was never strong at maths, but I eventually got onto a university physics/astronomy course, and that led on to my Ph.D. and eventual employment.

— Alastair Reynolds

I think the danger with using the term 'trilogy' is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader's mind.

— Alastair Reynolds

The first time I read a crime novel - I think it may have been an Elmore Leonard book - it took some time for me to realise how the genre worked. There were about 20 characters on the first page, and I wasn't used to this. I started to enjoy it when I saw that was how crime books worked.

— Alastair Reynolds

I used to be a strong believer that we would eventually colonize the solar system the way it's been done in science fiction many, many times: bases on the moon, Mars colonized, move out to the outer planets, then we go to the next solar system and build a colony there. I don't know now - I'm not as convinced that's the way it's going to pan out.

— Alastair Reynolds

The one thing that really terrifies me is we're going to get a signal from space that clears it all up: 'OK, this is how the universe works, guys.'

— Alastair Reynolds

I despair of reality television, but I've never met anyone who watches it. Or people say, 'I watch it, but I hate it.' I've never met anyone who loves it. It's like, it's there, and we have to accept it.

— Alastair Reynolds

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.

— Alastair Reynolds

One of the dangers of science fiction, particularly bad science fiction, is that you have these scenes where the characters turn to a blackboard and start explaining how this faster-than-light drive works, or something like that. We never really have those conversations in real life. That's not part of the way we interact as human beings.

— Alastair Reynolds

I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science and then get my Ph.D., then go aboard and work in the European Space Agency.

— Alastair Reynolds

It's true that my stories seem to deal with the end of the world. I've often been called the high priest of gothic miserablism, which is slightly unfair.

— Alastair Reynolds

If the Chinese are the first to the asteroids or the first to Mars, good for them, as far as I'm concerned.

— Alastair Reynolds

It's not healthy to obsess over every data point, every review or reader comment. I think the first few times you see someone writing about you, you have this massive emotional response to it. But after a while, it all just fades into the background noise.

— Alastair Reynolds

Above all else, 'Doctor Who' still seems to me to offer near-infinite scope for the writer. It must be the least constraining of televisual properties.

— Alastair Reynolds

I've never had much interest in spinoffery - the idea of writing in someone else's universe generally leaves me cold - but 'Doctor Who' is different. I've grown up with it. It's been part of my life since I was tiny, watching Jon Pertwee on a grainy black and white television in Cornwall and being terrified out of my mind.

— Alastair Reynolds

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