There Is A Fullness And Calmness There

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 All Eaters Of Souls.

Once Upon A Time ... The Only Autonomous Intelligences We Humans Knew Of Were Us Humans. We Thought Then That If Humankind Ever Devised Another Intelligence That It Would Be The Result Of A Huge Project ... A Great Mass Of Silicon And Ancient Transistors And Chips And Circuit Boards ... A Machine With Lots Of Networking Circuits, In Other Words, Aping-if You Will Pardon The Expression-the Human Brain In Form And Function. Of Course, Ais Did Not Evolve That Way. They Sort Of Slipped Into Existence When We Humans Were Looking The Other Way.

There Is No Doubt That I Have Discovered The Ultimate In Stagnant Human Societies. The Bikura Have Realized The Human Dream Of Immortality And Have Paid For It With Their Humanity And Their Immortal Souls.

Words Were Like Objects, Making The Idea More Solid -- Less A Poisonous Gas And More A ... Cube Of Crystallized Thought.