David Brin
David Brin
Glen David Brinis an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His Campbell Award-winning novel The Postman was adapted as a feature film and starred Kevin Costner in 1997. Brin's nonfiction book The Transparent Society won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association and the McGannon Communication Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth6 October 1950
CountryUnited States of America
I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.
My education and background thoroughly inform my writing
I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring
My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.
Beware of self-indulgence. The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; that ego is paramount over skill; that one can rise to a level from which one can tell the reader to go to hell. These myths, if believed, can ruin you. If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.
There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.
If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.
She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.
Is this a horrible future? Or actually a return to what we've always had in the past? Think of old villages. Everybody knew everything about everybody else. Strangers were intimidating and worrisome. This will be like the village our ancestors grew up in, only with 7 billion people.
The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers - it's that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.
What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?
I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.
You don't have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!