I suspect that young adults crave stories of broken futures because they themselves are uneasily aware that their world is falling apart.
From Paolo Bacigalupi
I'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth.
I'm really interested in how conflicts arise and how they reach points of no return. I'm no pacifist. Sometimes force is necessary. But war is a choice.
I'm interested in how we react when we're heavily pressed. When we're vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave?
Economies are embedded inside ecosystems. Companies dependent on tourism, for example, are affected by low rainfall - there's less snow for skiers, and forest fires are more intense.
All the definitions people want to put on you in terms of what kind of writer you are come with hidden meanings. If you're writing science fiction, you're writing rocket ships. If you write dystopian fiction, it's inequity where The Man must be fought.
I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like.
Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect.
The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes.
People don't actually stay still, you know - when their area is a disaster, they go somewhere else, right? And that's just a natural human impulse.
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