No Book Or Poem Is Ever Finished,

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.

No Book Or Poem Is Ever Finished, Merely Abandoned.

Fate And Victory Shift ... Now This Way, Now That Way -- Like A Line Of Unarmored Men Under A Hail Of Enemy Arrows.

There Are Many Other Writers Whose Work I Admire Tremendously, But None Whose Work Struck Me At Just The Right Young Age. Jack Vance Taught Me That Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Could Be Wonderfully And Liberatingly Stylistic. It Didn't Have To Be Pulp Stuff. He Really Changed My Writing And My View Of Science Fiction, So If Nothing Else, My Little Homage To Him In The Novelette I Wrote For That Anthology Is My Thank-you To Him. He Helped Me See That Any Genre Can Have Excellent Writing In It.

History Viewed From The Inside Is Always A Dark, Digestive Mess, Far Different From The Easily Recognizable Cow Viewed From Afar By Historians.