A Quote by 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
I think the danger with using the term 'trilogy' is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader's mind.
We don't use the term 'big data' - not on our website, not with customers. Saying it sets up expectations, the wrong expectations.
In my couple of books, including Going Clear, the book about Scientology, I thought it seemed appropriate at the end of the book to help the reader frame things. Because we've gone through the history, and there's likely conflictual feelings in the reader's mind. The reader may not agree with me, but I don't try to influence the reader's judgment. I know everybody who picks this book up already has a decided opinion. But my goal is to open the reader's mind a little bit to alternative narratives.
The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment.
Listen, I've been pretty fortunate. And if I've been underrated, it's actually been something I've been able to work with; I can surprise people. It sets me up to exceed expectations, so I don't mind.
After the children grew up, I began to focus on my writing. My first books were part of a trilogy... The 'Wind Dance' trilogy.
With the 'Old Kingdom' trilogy, at least half the readers were older adults rather than younger adults. I wrote them for myself with no particular audience in mind.
We're in the age of the series, trilogy, boxed sets.
Before you can become a writer, you have to be a reader, and a reader of everything, at that. To the best of my recollection, I became a reader at the age of 10 and have never stopped. Like many authors, I read all sorts of books all the time, and it is amazing how the mind fills up.
If a reader likes a particular author, they keep reading all his books, and if the supply is not kept up, then the reader shifts his loyalties.
The standard "foundation" for mathematics starts with sets and their elements. It is possible to start differently, by axiomatising not elements of sets but functions between sets. This can be done by using the language of categories and universal constructions.
I have no particular reader in mind, but a passionate desire to tell an honest, moving story.
The analytical writer observes the reader as he is; accordingly, he makes his calculation, sets his machine to make the appropriate effect on him. The synthetic writer constructs and creates his own reader; he does not imagine him as resting and dead, but lively and advancing toward him. He makes that which he had invented gradually take shape before the reader's eyes, or he tempts him to do the inventing for himself. He does not want to make a particular effect on him, but rather enters into a solemn relationship of innermost symphilosophy or sympoetry.
If the fidelity [ in a book] isn't maintained, the reader will think your structure is extraneous, or superficial, or that you're trying to curry favor, or live up to the expectations of some sort of genre or structure.
If I fulfill YOUR expectations, how am I going to transform you? I have to DESTROY your expectations. I have to destroy the very mind that creates those expectations. If you come to me, never come with expectations, otherwise you will be disappointed - because I have no obligation to fulfill your expectations in any way. In fact, if I see that there are some expectations, I do things DELIBERATELY to destroy those expectations. That is the price you have to pay to be with me.
Although we deal with probabilities and expectations, the actual results can deviate substantially from such expectations, particularly on a short-term basis.
Sometimes I think I might not have written 'The Age of Miracles' if I hadn't grown up in California, if I hadn't been exposed to its very particular blend of beauty and disaster, of danger and denial.
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