'253' has a little bit of time in it, but basically, everything's happening at once in a small space, and you're exploring the space. 'What happens next?' is not the question that you're asking or answering. It's where do you go, and why should you go there?

Geoff Ryman

Categorized in : You Small Time Space

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

Geoff Ryman

who-you-are self stories

Sex complicates, but it is the power of love to simplify.

Geoff Ryman

power-of-love simplify sex

This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else's sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your friends start to die, you can’t get fresh fruit in the shops.

Geoff Ryman

hurt giving book

Everything, no matter how beautiful, is only with us for awhile.

Geoff Ryman

matter beautiful

I'm in the back of a limousine with Charlie Chaplin and it’s 1928. Charlie is beautiful; his body language seems to skip, and reel and rhyme, heartbreaking and witty at the same time. It seems to promise a better world.

Geoff Ryman

witty beautiful promise

You know, all the evil in the world, all the sadness comes from not having a good answer to that question: What do I do next? You just keep thinking of good things to do, lad. You'll be all right. We'll all be all right. I wanted you to know that.

Geoff Ryman

sadness evil thinking

Everything goes, everything is lost, eventually. But if something is good, it doesn't matter what happens. The ending is still happy.

Geoff Ryman

stills matter lost

Literature for me… tries to heal the harm done by stories. (How much harm? Most of the atrocities of history have been created by stories, e.g., the Jews killed Jesus.) I follow Sartre that the freedom the author claims for herself must be shared with the reader. So that would mean that literature is stories that put themselves at the disposal of readers who want to heal themselves. Their healing power lies in their honesty, the freshness of their vision, the new and unexpected things they show, the increase in power and responsibility they give the reader.

Geoff Ryman

honesty lying jesus

Everything move...you wonder how it all knows where to go. Einstein wondered how birds knew where to migrate to. He thought they might follow lines of light in the sky. He saw everything as lines of light. That's how he was built. So we don't know how he moved, either. Any more than the birds.

Geoff Ryman

light sky moving

My favourite sites are all about web accessiblity, like Jakob Nielsen's site, but I'm afraid I've got quite utilitarian in my uses of the web. I buy things for friends and family in America on it. I find train times on it. I get a quick short article on a subject from it. I do not surf for fun much.

Geoff Ryman

friends-and-family friends family fun

Franchising implies a financial arrangement, and I am always pleased to consider those.

Geoff Ryman

those i-am always financial

The trouble with writing for the web is that writing is about getting people to forget they're reading. Anything that reminds them they are reading, or which annoys or distracts them, bounces them out of the world. And the web, it seems to me, is all bounce. A very, very difficult medium to write for.

Geoff Ryman

me reading people world

I sure do think it is an emergent form, but I also despair of reading online until screen quality is better.

Geoff Ryman

better think quality reading

Traditional fiction has a little bit of spatial exploration but is basically a question of time - the question is, what happens next?

Geoff Ryman

question exploration next time

With the hyperlinks, '253' says, 'Look at all the links we have we don't know about.' Without the links, the message becomes, 'Look at God's infinite variety.'

Geoff Ryman

without look know god

I work with a lot of scientists, and one of the frustrating things they find is that all this fascinating stuff is being done which doesn't find its way into science fiction. They say look at the science fact pages - they're so much more imaginative than science fiction.

Geoff Ryman

look work science way

It's my experience that scientists can find it difficult to understand the needs of scriptwriters or storytellers.

Geoff Ryman

find understand difficult experience