Mainstream Fiction Quotes & Sayings

Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science. — Walter Jon Williams

I don't really consider my work, on the whole, 'fringe' in my own mind; science fiction and fantasy have been pretty solidly in the mainstream for a while. — Jacqueline Carey

Most people surrendered fairy tale hopes in exchange for cookie cutter lives — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that the mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it
inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best since fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness. — Philip K. Dick

On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so he hoped. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Science fiction is the ugly stepchild of mainstream literature, and fantasy is the ugly stepchild of science fiction, and tie-in novels are the ugly stepchild of fantasy ... and on and on and on. — R.A. Salvatore

Brannagh Maloney had lived with disappearances all her life. They were as familiar to her as the changing of the Fundy tides. People who disappeared left cast-off shadows of themselves, murky tremblings that slunk out of corners on drizzly autumn afternoons. They lurked offstage, silent or sighing or reaching out to run a finger across her arm. They were the curtains fluttering in the window on a breezeless morning, the musty scent that arose when opening an abandoned cellar door.
LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU (Kunati Books) — Kathy-Diane Leveille

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part. — Jean M. Auel

The mainstream has lost its way. Crime fiction is an objective, realistic genre because it's about the real world, real bodies really being killed by somebody. And this involves the investigator in trying to understand the society that the person lived in. — Michael Dibdin

I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either. — Robert J. Sawyer

So, fuck 'em, we say. Fuck the mundane of Mainstream, the elitists of Literature. We're GENRE FICTION and proud of it, proud to wear that brand painted on the backs of our biker's jackets. — Hal Duncan

Once you break someone's heart, you are forever its master. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

A good writer should be able to write comedic work that made you laugh, and scary stuff that made you scared, and fantasy or science fiction that imbued you with a sense of wonder, and mainstream journalism that gave you clear and concise information in a way that you wanted it. — Neil Gaiman

I had seen the gay social chronicle done abundantly and done very well. And I didn't want to do any more of that myself, I wanted us to be included in the popular mainstream of entertainment fiction. — Christopher Rice

Besides,love is only a feeling. — Christina Westover

Inhale when I inhale. Exhale when I exhale. Breathe with me,for two beating hearts breathing one breath together become one. — Christina Westover

[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it! — Terry Pratchett

...forever meant different things to people at different times. They could imagine what infinity looked and felt like as much as they wanted, but could never truly grasp its meaning nor bear its full weight. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Testosterone poisoning can be fatal, Braveheart. (Delaney to Rowan) — Diana Duncan

I didn't have a manifesto. I had some discontent. It seemed to me that midcentury mainstream American science fiction had often been triumphalist and militaristic, a sort of folk propaganda for American exceptionalism. — William Gibson

The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate. — Grant Morrison

People talk about mainstream fiction and sf as though they were two quite different kinds of writing, and fantasy as well, as though it was quite different. But I think this a false distinction, that it is a labelling that helps librarians, and people who know the kind of thing they like and don't want their prejudices to be disturbed. — Angela Carter

His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him in and out of quite a few bedroom doors. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them. — Iain Banks

Trout might have said, and it can be said of me as well, that he created caricatures rather than characters. His animus against so-called mainstream literature, moreover, wasn't peculiar to him. It was generic among writers of science fiction. — Kurt Vonnegut

I know that I am going to meet a personal variation on reality; a partial view of reality. But I know also that by that partiality, that distancing from the shared experience, it will be new: a revelation. It will be a vision, a more or less powerful or haunting dream. A space-voyage through somebody else's psychic abysses. It will fall short of tragedy, because tragedy is the truth, and truth is what the very great artists, the absolute novelists, tell. It will not be truth; but it will be imagination. Truth is best. For it encompasses tragedy and partakes of the eternal joy. But very few of us know it; the best we can do is recognize it. Imagination - to me - is the next best. For it partakes of Creation, which is one aspect of the eternal joy.
All the rest is either Politics or Pedantry, or Mainstream Fiction, may it rest in peace. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Perhaps all love stories no matter how varied are essentially the same. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

About the only valid definition (of science fiction) that I'm willing to accept is this: all of modern, mainstream, and realistic fiction is simply a branch, a category, or a subset of science fiction. — Mike Resnick

Was happiness (which was perhaps achieved not by getting what you wanted, but rather, by obtaining what you didn't know you wished for until it was in hand) a hologram that would continually change appearance with the slightest shift of perspective? Or maybe happiness by definition was a temporary state of being recognizable only in hindsight. It was impossible to catch what always managed to be overrun and end up in the rear view mirror. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just 'The Other.' — Bharati Mukherjee

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you're slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It's a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn't bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire. — Laurie Penny

Poetry is not mainstream, but then neither is serious fiction, really. But I don't think there's a lot to worry about in this particular 'problem'. Why does art have to be mainstream to be significant? — Jonathan Galassi

Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn't excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century. — Walter Mosley

And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

...the locale did not make him think of her, nor did most things. He felt no negativity about the time they had spent together, but simply did not dwell on it much. She had been a seat filler, memorable as the smiling face of a beautiful girl in the window of a passing train, inspiring a fleeting moment of joy and promise, immediately forgotten with the opening of that day's newspaper. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

I feel like science fiction is so much more mainstream now than it has been. And I feel like that's because technology has caught up with us. — Alaina Huffman

For those who resist the notion that the mainstream is a genre, we recommend that they browse the shelves of their local bookstore. For if the mainstream is not a genre, then it must necessarily embrace all kinds of writing: romance, adventure, horror, thriller, crime, and, yes, science fiction. — James Patrick Kelly

My fiction is reviewed by the mainstream press, by science fiction periodicals, romance magazines, small press publications and various other journals, including some usually devoted to archaeological and other science material. — Jean M. Auel

Life was a swirl of mysteries, each one waiting to be plucked up and explored, but not necessarily solved. As the weight of responsibility bore down on a person, it could feel like a long list of chores leading up to the final one - figuring out how to die with dignity. But Quincy's interpretation of his surroundings seemed a truer representation of life's meaning, or rather, the lack of meaning other than to dazzle and delight and befuddle from cradle to grave. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

In a science fiction novel, the world is a character, and often the most important character.
In a mainstream novel, the world is implicitly our world, and the characters are the world. — Jo Walton

If you spend any amount of time doing media analysis, it's clear that the most frenzied moral panic surrounding young women's sexuality comes from the mainstream media, which loves to report about how promiscuous girls are, whether they're acting up on spring break, getting caught topless on camera, or catching all kinds of STIs. Unsurprisingly, these types of articles and stories generally fail to mention that women are attending college at the highest rates in history, and that we're the majority of undergraduate and master's students. Well-educated and socially engaged women just don't make for good headlines, it seems. — Jessica Valenti

Nothing felt better to him than the act of waiting for her. As long as he believed it wasn't in vain, he was able to justify his presence. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

Fantasy is an area where it is possible to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, with a straight face. In mainstream fiction and even in a good deal of mystery, these things are presented as simply two sides of the same coin. Never really more than a matter of where you happen to be standing. — Robert Jordan

Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves. — Karan Bajaj

A snappy label and a manifesto would have been two of the very last things on my own career want list. That label enabled mainstream science fiction to safely assimilate our dissident influence, such as it was. Cyberpunk could then be embraced and given prizes and patted on the head, and genre science fiction could continue unchanged. — William Gibson

I had said that Le Guin's worlds were real because her people were so real, and he said yes, but the people were so real because they were the people the worlds would have produced. If you put Ged to grow up on Anarres or Shevek in Earthsea, they would be the same people, the backgrounds made the people, which of course you see all the time in mainstream fiction, but it's rare in SF. — Jo Walton