Scottish - Writer | February 16, 1954 - June 9, 2013
Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.
Iain Banks
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Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke... and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research.
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As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.
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Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.
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I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you're frightened of is to make fun of it. That's why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds.
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As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.
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I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness.
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I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.
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I'm not a great believer in awards-of course the fact that I've never won one has nothing to do with it at all!
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You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.
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I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!
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By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.
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