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[tanaise]

I'm just all linky today. Sean Stewart interview that said some wonderful things. Let me cut some snippets for this:

"I have always felt a huge pressure to write really good, really thoughtful science fiction, rather than that other stuff," he said. "One thing about the 'A.I' game is that I was writing so many characters so fast that there was absolutely no time for tasteful. It was enormously liberating. So they'd come to me and say, 'OK, now we need an exciting scene with a murder by a crazed sex robot.' And I'd say, 'Bring it on! I am your guy!' "While Stewart's new novel, "Perfect Circle," is disappointingly light on crazed sex robots, he says the giddiness he felt writing for "The Beast" can be found on its pages.

...

"I was actually writing a book about family and what's forgotten and what's never forgotten, and what we love and what we can't get over loving," he said. "Sure, the occasional person gets shot and has gasoline thrown on them. But without that emotional center, the book didn't feel urgent to me."

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He said that those [fantastical] elements can be used to dramatize themes in ways that literary novels can't. It's one thing to talk about missing somebody; it's another to see their ghostly reflection in your oven door.

"Ask yourself if 'Hamlet' would be better if Hamlet went up on the battlements to consult with his psychiatrist," Stewart said.