Kelly Link/Locus/SF
Jul. 26th, 2002 01:01 amKelly link, in this month's locus: "And I decided there are two things science fiction does: it takes things which are comfortable and familiar and makes them really strange, or else it takes things which are strange and impossible and finally makes them feel comfortable, to a certain extent."
There. That's it. That's exactly how I see what I write. And much better put than I would have managed, so now I'll be borrowing her words for it. I write stories with no speculative element, to the point that my last week here I was tempted to use the phrase, "the morning sun through the west-facing windows." (or, as my mother suggested, 'the morning suns" just so I could point at it and say, "See? It's SF. I told you! I write SF. I don't know how to write anything else. there's a way of looking at the world that I only see in SF, a way of approaching language. And that's what I'm writing from, even if my stories don't have elves or spaceships. One of my stories has as its speculative element, simply a mad- up culture. Techincally, I suppose it doesn't have to be SF, it could just be mainstream. Plenty of mainstream books invent cultures and countries. But it still feels like SF to me, and I still can't imagine that it's mainstream.
There. That's it. That's exactly how I see what I write. And much better put than I would have managed, so now I'll be borrowing her words for it. I write stories with no speculative element, to the point that my last week here I was tempted to use the phrase, "the morning sun through the west-facing windows." (or, as my mother suggested, 'the morning suns" just so I could point at it and say, "See? It's SF. I told you! I write SF. I don't know how to write anything else. there's a way of looking at the world that I only see in SF, a way of approaching language. And that's what I'm writing from, even if my stories don't have elves or spaceships. One of my stories has as its speculative element, simply a mad- up culture. Techincally, I suppose it doesn't have to be SF, it could just be mainstream. Plenty of mainstream books invent cultures and countries. But it still feels like SF to me, and I still can't imagine that it's mainstream.