I learned to read on my father’s science fiction collection \u2014 the masters: Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Chad Oliver, Frederick Pohl, and on and on. They formed my sense of what a story was: a main character who has enough strengths to be likable and enough weaknesses to be believable, coming up against an obstacle that tests a weakness, overcoming the obstacle and in the process strengthening his or her (usually his) character. The overcoming was a given, but it was still thrilling.<\/p>\n
Science fiction and fantasy still fascinate me. It is a literature of ideas \u2014 which does not mean that I agree it is weak in characterization or style or anything else.<\/p>\n
I have branched out: to women authors, stories that don’t always end victorious, the ambiguous characters of cyberpunk, and always treasuring the rare and wonderful comic writers who don’t take anything in the genre as sacred. I find a lot of good writing in many different styles.<\/p>\n
Science fiction seems to be one of the best genres for asking, “What does it mean to be human?” as well as “What if?” and “hmmm… so what can we do with this?”<\/p>\n
All literature draws on archetypes, but fantasy most of all. At its best, fantasy is a type of lucid dreaming, explaining us to ourselves by using metaphor and symbol. It can also be sheer play.<\/p>\n
H.P. Lovecraft was included in my father’s collection, although a little of him went a long way for me personally. But I do enjoy the horror novels of writers like S.P. Somtow and Charles de Lint, who explore the Shadow in humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I learned to read on my father’s science fiction collection \u2014 the masters: Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Chad Oliver, Frederick Pohl, and on and on. They formed my sense of what a story was: a main character who has enough strengths to be likable and enough weaknesses to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":154,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-269","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/269\/revisions\/272"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/anitra.net\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}