He Took A Duck In

I Was Travelling With Bruce Sterling On Our Mutual Difference Engine Tour And He Became Aware From The Experience Of Travelling With Me That I Would Distinguish Among The Shoes In A Perfectly Normal Fashion, But Form Him It Was A Revelation. There's A Very Lyrical Passage In Holy Fire About Old Wealthy European Men And Their Shoes, And How Beautiful Their Shoes Are, And How There Have Never Been Shoes As Beautiful. I Think That That Was Probably As Close As Bruce Will Ever Get To Homage In My Direction. I Made Him Aware Of Footwear Fashion.

It Doesn't Matter How Fast Your Modem Is If You're Being Shelled By Ethnic Separatists.

I Had A List Of Things That Science Fiction, Particularly American Science Fiction, To Me Seemed To Do With Tedious Regularity. One Was To Not Have Strong Female Protagonists. One Was To Envision The Future, Whatever It Was, As America.

What Strikes Me About Toronto Is That Toronto's Great Misfortune Was To Have Too Much Money In The Late 70s And Early 80s, And Consequently, It Built In The Style Of Those Periods, Which Is Hideous.

Part Of The Core Of My System, Is A Way Of Trying To Give The Characters More Control. If I'm Practicing Making Up What The Characters Will Do, It's Never Good. In Fact, When I Catch Myself Doing That, I Try To Get Rid Of That Section, And Try And Let Them Start Making The Decisions.