You could engineer a human to survive the greenhouse effect because you think that’s what’s going to happen, and then all of a sudden the glaciers are creeping down on you. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
Just as our solar system has a certain idiosyncratic assortment of planets and moons, different from any neighboring system yet categorically equivalent, so each distinct period of human history might have special qualities and individuals, characteristics and events, yet still be essentially akin beneath the surface to all the others. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
One posthumous measure of a person’s life is how often you imagine his impossible return to deal with some event he never lived to encounter. You picture his reactions, his advice, his sage commentary and humorous asides. For instance, I think about Mark Twain’s hypothetical take on current events several times a week. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
It was not until the appearance of cyberpunk in the 1980s that SF began to grapple in a broadly meaningful way with the reality of computers as something other than giant mainframes tended by crewcut IBM nerds. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
Generally speaking, by the time a subculture such as steampunk secures the attention of major media, resulting in extensive coverage of the craze, said phenomenon is already on the way out. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
The juggernaut that is steampunk, like Dr. Loveless’s giant mechanical spider in the 1999 film version of ‘The Wild, Wild West,’ seems capable of crushing all naysayers. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
It is truly bracing and instructive to contemplate the End Times – at least at safe remove, in the pages of fiction – especially as the world beyond our hearths churns and convulses unknowably, yet perhaps just short of ultimate disaster. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
More than we sleep, play, or make love, we work. Yet despite – or perhaps because of – this dominant daily grind, much of our literature is biased toward other pursuits. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
Every new generation of SF writers remakes cyberpunk – a genre often laced with dystopian subtexts – in its own image. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
Steampunk, the repurposing of Victorian culture and technology for contemporary fun and profit, is so ubiquitous – in media, books, fashion, music, cosplay, and maker culture – that we tend to imagine its superficial aspects are all that define it. Paul Di Filippo Read Quote
