A Quote by China Mieville

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.
I really wish that peoplewould just say, 'Yes, it's a comic. Yes, this is fantasy. Yes, this is Science Fiction,' and defend the genre instead of saying, 'Horror is a bit passe so this is Dark Fantasy,' and that' s playing someone else's game. So that's why I say I'm a fantasy writer and to hell with 'It doesn't read like what I think of as a fantasy'. In that case what you think of as a fantasy is not a fantasy. Or there is more to it than you think.
I've been fortunate in that the films I've worked on in the horror genre are themselves not pure horror, and have allowed me to write in a wide variety of styles. Those scores contain elements of fantasy, drama, action, comedy... really all types of scoring, and that gives the horror moments more impact. As for scoring the horror moments, I do like approaching the music from the psychological aspect, scoring to the characters' thoughts, emotions, motivations and such.
I read anything I could get my hands on: science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers. I even became hooked on the Bantam reprints of the old pulp novels from thirties and forties: Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger.
Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and horror haven't grown out of enjoying the strange and weird.
Horror movies scare me. I don't really watch them. I'm not a big horror genre fan. I like certain classic horror - like 'Alien', 'Jaws', 'The Exorcist', stuff like that.
I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF. Much of it is right-wing, reactionary crap.
I loved 'Pan's Labyrinth.' It transported me into another world. I like fantasy worlds; I love 'Lord of the Rings' as well, for that reason, because you really get to get out of reality and go somewhere else.
I have never written a book that I wouldn't want to read. The trouble is, I love to read horror, sf, fantasy, mysteries, hero pulps - romantic fiction, in the original, traditional meaning of that term, as opposed to mimetic fiction. But most of all, I love thrillers.
I do like sci-fi, and I do like horror - those are my favorite genres. Good horror, though, not like slasher horror... psychological horror like 'The Shining' - really good stuff!
Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.
Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.
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.
You'll get, like, 10 pages of sides the night before, and you have to go in and just wing it. For someone like me, I came from the theater, and I don't like putting anything up in front of anybody until it's really, really ready, so it can be very frustrating.
I love being the underdog. It's one of the reason I like making horror movies, because a lot of people don't like them or are prejudiced against them. So it's one of the many reasons I like horror and it's also the reason I like low budget, because it automatically makes us the underdog.
I really struggled with what I was going to do with fantasy suites, but I didn't really want to think too much about it until we got there. I had a lot of other things on my mind at that point... but really that was just a personal decision between me and whoever I decided to go into the fantasy suite with or decided not to.
I'm a fantasy writer. I don't do SF. This is important to me. If you're not clear on what genre you're in, everything gets muddled, and it's hard to know which rules you're breaking.
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