Why must we love where the lightning strikes, and not where we choose?

I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of it is crud.

Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn't fiction at all.

I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do.

Here's the point to be made - there are no synonyms. There are no two words that mean exactly the same thing.

Ninety percent of SF [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.

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