My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.
From Frederik Pohl
The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction.
You look at the world around you, and you take it apart into all its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens.
That's the method: restructure the world we live in in some way, then see what happens.
In terms of stories I would buy for a science fiction magazine, if they take place in the future, that might do it.
I'm pretty catholic about what constitutes science fiction.
I was thinking of writing a little foreword saying that history is, after all, based on people's recollections, which change with time.
The big new development in my life is, when I turned 80, I decided I no longer have to do four pages a day. For me, it's like retiring.
I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter - now, computer - lit up a cigarette.
My first thought was always a cigarette. It still is, but I haven't cheated.
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