A Quote by Alastair Reynolds

I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF. Much of it is right-wing, reactionary crap. — © Alastair Reynolds
I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF. Much of it is right-wing, reactionary crap.
I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion.
I don't play right wing now but I am up and down the right wing a lot at club football. I know it would be a lot different but when I was younger I played there so I don't think I'd be uncomfortable playing there.
There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet?
I'm praying for Barack Obama to stay on the tightrope because I want to fight his right-wing critics. I want to down I want to ensure they don't lie about him. I'm sure they don't demonize him, and too much of that is going on. So I don't want my critiques to be in any way confused with the right-wing critiques, even though I'll fight for the right wing to be wrong in that regard.
The reason that I like SF and fantasy and horror is that to me it's the pulp wing of surrealism. That's the aesthetic of undermining and creative alienation that I really go for.
Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
But in the right-wing media, they do have a right-wing bias. And they also have an agenda. So their agenda is: we're an adjunct of the Republican Party, and we're going push that agenda every day, and, as you say, brand these stories that help further the right-wing cause.
I've taken a lot of crap from a lot of people. Probably more than anybody in the history of this sport. I know Hank (Aaron) and Jackie (Robinson) took a good deal of crap, but I guarantee it wasn't for six years. I just keep thinking: How much am I supposed to take?
I talked a bunch of crap for years and then went out and worked hard. That's the extent of it. There's no magical genius to it, as much as I'd like to think there is. I'm just a guy who works hard - and I hope guys are challenged by that.
At birth we are very much like a new hard drive - no viruses, no bad information, no crap that's been downloaded into it yet. It's what we feed into that hard drive that starts the corruption of the files.
SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
There are two forms of populism, left-wing populism and right-wing populism. Right-wing populism requires the denigration of an "Other." Left-wing populism tends to be about the haves and have-nots.
There are people who are genuinely upset in the Tea Party. I understand that. But that movement was funded with seed money from right-wing billionaires, the Koch brothers, and promoted on Fox News, and turned into a stocking horse for the right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on the country for a long time.
If your father is an air-conditioner repairman from Nebraska, its conceivable that you might become a CEO, but you can't imagine being the drama critic for the New York Times. So if you come from a background like that and you want to actually have a career which involves doing something noble in the world, what can you do? You can join the army. That's about it. Or you can work for the church. That explains a lot of the focus of right-wing populism. The right wing figured that out, that people want enough to survive and to do good.
I'm not left-wing, or right-wing. With only one wing I couldn't fly, and I just couldn't have that.
I've always thought the American eagle needed a left wing and a right wing. The right wing would see to it that economic interests had their legitimate concerns addressed. The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. Both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it's no longer an eagle and it's going to crash.
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