A Quote by Philip Reeve

My first encounter with science fiction was reading the work of H.G. Wells when I was nine or ten, and I don't believe 'The War of the Worlds' or 'The Time Machine' have ever been bettered. Plus, I have always had a liking for Victorian and Edwardian clothes and contraptions, which tends to color the worlds I dream up.
Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.
I guess...on one hand, I spent way too much time watching science fiction and reading science fiction when I was growing up. But a part of it is I also never felt much of a connection to the world in which I lived while I was growing up, and so, oddly enough, I think I felt a lot more connected to the worlds that I read about in science fiction.
There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it - mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore.
Science fiction is about worlds you don't know and worlds you can create, like in 'Avatar'.
I felt like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.
I have always been intensely uncomfortable with the idea of a science fiction writer as prophet. Not that there haven't been science fiction writers who think of themselves as having some sort of prophetic role, but when I think of that, I always think of H.G. Wells - he would think of what was going to happen, and he would imagine how it would happen, and then he would create a fiction to illustrate the idea that he'd had. And no part of my process has ever resembled that at all.
I've always been a big fan of science fiction and of the worlds of the spiritual and the mystic.
There are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters.
Being a fan of science fiction, I collect a lot of science fiction art work and so if you go to my house there's like a library and you just geek out on science fiction material. A lot of the colony worlds specifically are built as a melting pot of different societies, because the world is at a point where there are only two zones that are left inhabitable.
Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
Science fiction has never been about the future; it's always been about the present day whether it's Victorian England that Wells was writing about or the post-9/11 era that I'm writing about.
I grew up a really nerdy kid. I read science fiction and fantasy voraciously, for the first 16 years of my life. I read a lot of classic Cold War science fiction, which is much of the best science fiction, so I speak the language well, which is a commodity that's not easy to come by in Hollywood.
I love the Victorian era, and I always have, but I had a leg up on the writing because I was familiar with a lot of the science from the Victorian era. And that led to a massive interest in the science of this time of history.
Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science.
I've always really loved big worlds and the kind of worldbuilding where you can open a portal into a new realm that feels full and complete. At the same time, I also really love history. So the combination of big worlds and history draws me directly into fantasy. Well, it should turn me towards historical fiction but I'm such a perfectionist about research that I'm not sure I could ever write a book in that genre properly. In fantasy, you have to have the same level of precision, but it's not as research-based. Plus, I get to write my little info sheets and draw my maps.
My work is very eclectic. I write books that range from writing fiction, writing fable where I am very directly trying to imagine alternate worlds, to writing about [Buckminster] Fuller who was the ultimate world man creating all sorts of alternate worlds and believing that they were imminent to my own work of - for instance, a project that I've been working on for some year and a half, two years now that continues to evolve has been what I call Deep Time Photography.
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