This is what I get from being a Science Fiction writer: not fame and fortune, but good friends. That's what makes it worth it to me.
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All responsible writers, to some degree, have become involuntary criers of doom, because doom is in the wind; but science fiction writers more so, since science fiction has always been a protest medium.
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I have, in some of my stories and novels, written about androids or robots or simulacra, the name doesn't matter; what is meant is artificial constructs masquerading as humans. Usually with a sinister purpose in mind. I suppose I took it for granted that if such a construct, a robot, for example, had a benign or anyhow decent purpose in mind, it would not need to so disguise itself. The constructs do not mimic humans; they are, in many deep ways, actually human already.
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The very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create, and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.
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That's my purpose. My purpose is to take these characters, who I know, and present them to other people, and have them know them, so that they can say that they've known them, too, and have enjoyed the pleasure of their company. And that is the purpose that I have, which, I suppose, is a purpose beyond entertainment.
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Sometimes the presence of grave social problems is a stimulus to exploration; man searches relentlessly for a way out of his problems, and in doing so he presses at every door, hoping to find one that will lead him somewhere that is new and different.
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I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I'm out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality.
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Machines are becoming more human, so to speak and some meaningful comparison exists between human and mechanical behavior. But is it ourselves that we know first and foremost? Rather than learning about ourselves by studying our constructs, perhaps we should make the attempt to comprehend what our constructs are up to by looking into what we ourselves are up to.
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My own feeling, especially in view of the very recent laboratory findings that some connection exists between schizophrenia and subsecretions of the adrenal gland, is this: "The sane man does not know that everything is possible." In other words, the mentally ill person at one time or another knew too much. And, as a result, so to speak, his head shut down.
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The writer must offend people if he's going to be effective. It's like someone once said about opera. "Stab a tenor and he sings." Stab a writer, or step on his toes, and he'll write. It's an automatic reflex reaction. A writer writes because it's his response to the world. It's a natural process, like respiration.? But above all, a writer must have a capacity for indignation. The capacity for indignation is the most important thing for a creative person. Not the aesthetic capacity but the capacity for indignation. And especially indignation at the treatment afforded other people. To see a blind and deaf baby and to feel anger, to feel fury, at the starving of children and the arrest of political dissidents. That is the basis of the writer.
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