You Have To Live To Really Know

I Despair At The Rise Of Modern Violence. I Truly Give In To Despair At Times, That Deep, Futureless Pit Of Despair.... I Watch The American Slaughterhouse, The Casual Attacks On Popes, Presidents, And Uncounted Others, And I Wonder If There Are Many More Out There With The Ability Or If Butchery Has Simply Become The Modern Way Of Life.

I Think All The Simple Things Can And Do Still Work - Holding Your Child's Hand While Walking Across The Street Will Do It. But We Can Hardly Hear It For All The Noise Which Has Turned Love Into A Cliche, And Most People Can't Even Hear John Lennon's "all You Need Is Love" Anymore Without Wincing.

When I Get About Five Readers I Can Rub Together In One Genre, I Leave That Genre And Go Somewhere Else. And This Is Due To A Vow That I Made Myself When I Started Writing - That If I Had Any Success At All, I Would Not Be Bound To One Form Of Writing. That I Would Write What Moves Me. The Only Way I Can See Me Surviving And Doing More Than One Book Is To Present The Readers With A Dan Simmons Novel, With Whatever Tropes And Protocols From Whatever Genre I Want To Borrow Them. If That Builds A Dan Simmons Readership, Well Then, Okay. Otherwise, Forget About It. I'd Rather Drive A Truck.

We Are Not The Only Avatars Of Humanity. Once Our Computing Machines Achieved Self-consciousness, They Became Part Of This Design.

Barbarians, We Call Them, While All The While We Timidly Cling To Our Web Like Visigoths Crouching In The Ruins Of Rome's Faded Glory And Proclaim Ourselves Civilized.