
“The most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction.”
Alistair Cooke
The Novel of the Future (1969)
“The most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction.”
Alistair Cooke
Nonconformity (1953/1996)
Context: The American middle class's faith in personal comfort as an end in itself is, in essence, a denial of life. And it has been imposed upon American writers and playwrights strongly enough to cut them off from their deeper sources. The shortcut to comfort is called “specialization,” and in an eye-ear-nose-and-throat doctor this makes sense. But in a writer it is fatal. The less he sees of other writers the more of a writer he will ultimately become. When he sees scarcely anyone except other writers, he is ready for New York.
“Science fiction offers its writers chances of embarrassment that no other form of fiction does.”
Robot Dreams (1986), introduction
General sources
“For a writer, life must be the focus that death illuminates daily.”
Source: Para un escritor la vida debe ser el foco que la muerte ilumina a diario.
Source: Zárate, Y. (2019). "José Baroja". En revista Momentos Ahora o nunca. Número 139. Tlaxcala, México; p. 24.
"Mythcon 35 Guest of Honor Speech", in Mythprint (October 2004)
'The American Strangeness: An Interview with Don DeLillo' by Gerald Howard, The Hungry Mind Review, #47 , 1997
Darwin Among the Machines
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part III - The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit
Context: Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
“Like most science-fiction writers, Trout knew almost nothing about science.”
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
“Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.”
Dragon Page Cover to Cover interview, Episode 372A (8 September 2009)