Sometimes when we label something dystopian fiction, I feel like we’re trying very hard not to use the words ‘science fiction,’ because science fiction has those horrible connotations of rocket ships and bodacious babes. – Paolo Bacigalupi
As far as ‘Windup Girl’ becoming a hit – none of us expected that. ‘Night Shade’ was just hoping not to lose their shirts, and I had grown up hearing from everyone that science fiction didn’t sell, so all of our expectations were very low. – Paolo Bacigalupi
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
I have friends who are science journalists, and I’m seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they’re pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology. – Paolo Bacigalupi
I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like. – Paolo Bacigalupi
I’m interested in how we react when we’re heavily pressed. When we’re vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave? – Paolo Bacigalupi
I’m really interested in how conflicts arise and how they reach points of no return. I’m no pacifist. Sometimes force is necessary. But war is a choice. – Paolo Bacigalupi
Mostly I sat down and said, ‘I’m not going to write a boring story.’ And that actually, surprisingly, solves most of your problems. – Paolo Bacigalupi
Science fiction has these obsessions with certain sciences – large scale engineering, neuroscience. – Paolo Bacigalupi
I think inherently, a little bit, I’m a bit of a pleaser, and I want people to like me and be nice, and to not ruffle feathers and just make everybody happy and stuff. It’s a personality flaw. – Paolo Bacigalupi
I am interested in agricultural corporations and how they function. The idea that they own the genetics of our food supply is a really compelling thing to me. – Paolo Bacigalupi
The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes. – Paolo Bacigalupi
I suspect that young adults crave stories of broken futures because they themselves are uneasily aware that their world is falling apart. – Paolo Bacigalupi
Originally, ‘The Windup Girl’ started as a short story – a very gnarly, complicated short story set in Bangkok that didn’t work very well. – Paolo Bacigalupi
Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect. – Paolo Bacigalupi
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
I’m particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works. – Paolo Bacigalupi
The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province. – Paolo Bacigalupi
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
I’m not proud of it, but I’m a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth. – Paolo Bacigalupi
The sources and research I use for my inspiration aren’t your typical sci-fi subjects, but it’s really driven by obsession and personal anxiety more than trying to take up the sword and do what’s right. – Paolo Bacigalupi
I think that, when I think about the future that ‘The Water Knife’ represents, it’s one where there’s a lack of oversight, planning and organization. – Paolo Bacigalupi
I don’t know why we choose to reach out to help another person, or why we decide that we can’t, and withdraw and try to care only for ourselves, but I’m fascinated by that choice. – Paolo Bacigalupi
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
Maybe storytelling belongs in audio – a short story is the length of a commute. That can be a sacred spot where you have the ear of the reader without having to compete with other media like games or TV. – Paolo Bacigalupi
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
I know people who have gone into career death spins, and that’s something you’re always aware of as a writer. – Paolo Bacigalupi
When somebody keeps telling you, ‘This book is amazing,’ you sort of have this pleasing instinct to say, ‘Oh, let me make you happy again; let me do that trick again.’ – Paolo Bacigalupi
People don’t actually stay still, you know – when their area is a disaster, they go somewhere else, right? And that’s just a natural human impulse. – Paolo Bacigalupi
