Quotes from Edward M. Lerner

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

It was a curious sort of immortality. Everyone in the world would repeat one hour, forever, and never realize that time had come to a quivering halt at that point. And Myron Castleman would be permitted to live forever, piling up experiences and memories, but each of only an hour's duration, each resumed at 12:01 PM on this balmy spring day in Manhattan, standing outside near the Grand Central Tower.

Today's common sense had a habit of turning into tomorrow's utter nonsense.

the shore, where Rikki, her breathing mask dangling

Anything that can unambiguously represent two values - while resisting, just a wee bit, randomly flipping from the state you want retained into the opposite state - can encode binary data.

The medical nanobots in my novel 'Small Miracles' tap the energy sources that the patient's own body provides. That is, they can metabolize glycerol and glucose, just as the cells in our bodies do.

History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.

Too much detail can bog down any story. Enough with the history of gunpowder, the geology of Hawaii, the processes of whaling, and cactus and tumbleweed.

One of the bedrock principles of physics is the conservation of energy. In this universe, energy can be neither created nor destroyed.

It would help if human experts agreed on the meaning of such basic terms as intelligence, consciousness, or awareness. They don't. It's hard to build something that's incompletely defined.

I want to believe humanity has not forgotten how to explore.

Science works as a way to make sense of life and the universe. Hard SF as my preferred fictional genre just feels natural.

I like to think readers appreciate a well-drawn near-future as well as a well-drawn far-future.

The challenge - and much of the fun - of writing in an established future history lies in incorporating new knowledge while remaining true to what has gone before. Expanding and enriching, not contradicting.

The biggest fatal flaw in most fictional portrayals of nanotech - what sends those books arcing across the room - is ignoring that the nanobots need energy to do... anything.

Some books are serials, not to be mistaken for anything else. 'The Two Towers,' for example, ought never to be read in isolation.

Time travel offends our sense of cause and effect - but maybe the universe doesn't insist on cause and effect.

I have to believe SF writers will continue to inspire the public to have faith in - to demand! - a future that is at least as big and bold as the past.

Lots of science fiction deals with distant times and places. Intrepid prospectors in the Asteroid Belt. Interstellar epics. Galactic empires. Trips to the remote past or future.

What SF author or fan isn't interested in human space travel? I've yet to meet one.

A funny thing about near-future stories: the future catches up to them. If the author is unlucky, the future catches up faster than the book can get out the door.

I was only eight when Sputnik was launched, and at that age the boundary between science and fiction is pretty blurry. Whichever way the process ran, I've been a fan of science and SF ever since.

In mainstream literature, a trope is a figure of speech: metaphor, simile, irony, or the like. Words used other than literally. In SF, a trope - at least as I understand the usage - is more: science used other than literally.

Many a fine SF story uses science or technology merely as backdrop. Many a fine SF story presumes a technological breakthrough and explores its implications without attempting to predict how the thing might actual work.