When we talk about dystopias, especially in young adult fiction, a lot of them are essentially science fictional futures. They aren’t necessarily tied to the traditional concept of dystopia. And so in that space, my impression is that kids love reading about weird, wild, adventurous places, and dystopia fits that bill. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
I don’t put a very clear label on my work. If anything, I write science fiction – looking at a moment now, in the present, and then extrapolating outward to think about what the future might look like if this particular trend goes on, or if this particular trend is the most dominant. That’s a science fictional tool. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
When I was writing ‘The Windup Girl’ and ‘Ship Breaker,’ I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
The marketplace tells us that good, visceral storytelling has a place. But there are lots of questions about the format that stories take. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
We’re all happier when we know less, because the details are frightening and haven’t really improved much. The more you pay attention, the more horrifying the world is. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future – those are science fictional questions. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
The things that have really gotten confusing to me is how you balance the desires of your publishers to produce things on a schedule, and people are always sort of giving you ideas on what you should follow up with or how you should proceed next and things like that. Paolo Bacigalupi Read Quote
