> > The human condition is quite an interesting enough subject without
> > conjecture.
>
> You're quite right that the impetus behind some writing of sf or
> fantasy is conjection, the what-if impulse.
>
> That's not why I write fantasy, though; I'm not really very good
> at conjecture.  I write fantasy because it best expresses what I
> see in the human condition.  To tell the truth, I have to, as
> Emily Dickenson said in another connection, tell it slan

Oh, I agree with you. I used to really only be able to tell it a
certain way ... science fiction and fantasy being the primary way
(also some mystery). I couldn't even *read* most literary fiction
until I was about 25, although I could read along the lines of Martin
Eden, Great Expectations, The Lighthouse, and a few others. I tried to
write Succubus Sea at 19, but dammit, it just didn't come out right.
It didn't have what I wanted it to have. My science fiction and
fantasy at that age had what I wanted it to have -- and so, I was
happy with it.

Then, the big crises of my life happened and I simply switched tracks.
When my wife nearly died ... when the "reality" of that hit me at so
young an age ... I didn't so much grow up as just snap into another
mode of thinking. Major crises in life like that can change the tune,
but not really the instrument.

All of a sudden I had *lived* what I had wanted to say with Succubus
Sea. So, I sat down, and stretched myself (with Abadoun), which I
considered an exercise more than a novel. And then, for five or so
years ... nothing. I didn't want to touch fiction. Well, I wanted to,
but not until I was sure I had something that I *wanted* to say. The
rest, as they say, is history. (Yeah, right.)

I find, for me, that I can write science fiction and fantasy only when
I am extremely idealistic about life, and I sure was until I was about
25. As I became more cynical, jaded ... I simply lost interest in
writing it, for the most part.  If I ever return to it, it will be as
a more mature writer (mature relative only to myself, not to others).

I greatly admire such works as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
That is the kind of science fiction I would *want* to write, were I
into the genre, and if I ever return to the genre, that's the kind of
thing I want to know I am able to at least *possibly* achieve before I
ever touch the genre again.  My short story "The Vitruvian" has been
very well received, and I have considered lengthening the thing to a
novel ... so there may be hope for me yet. ;-)

--
Quinn Tyler Jackson
http://members.shaw.ca/qjackson/
http://members.shaw.ca/jacksonsolutions/

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