Literary Birthday – 6 March – Daniel H. Wilson

Happy Birthday, Daniel H. Wilson, born 6 March 1978.

Daniel H. Wilson Quotes

1. Science fiction inspires scientists, but it doesn’t exist to dictate what our future should look like. Great science fiction is fun to read and it makes you think, period. Claiming anything more than that is dicey. Grand visions of the future were more prevalent in the golden-age science fiction, but all fiction is a reflection of the current times. As science moves more quickly, the horizon of science fiction tends to recede closer to the present.
2. I absolutely don’t think a sentient artificial intelligence is going to wage war against the human species.
3. I was writing a scene where a guy was choking another guy to death. You can go online and type ‘chokeholds’ and watch scenes where martial artists choke each other out. You can hear what noises they make when they go unconscious, see how their bodies flop and everything. YouTube is amazing for the more detailed stuff.
4. As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I’d be writing novels.
5. I wrote six non-fiction books before getting into narrative fiction with Robopocalypse, including How to Survive a Robot Uprising. My goal all along was to start writing fiction, and I guess one day I’d just had enough.
6. Memories fade but words hang around forever.
7. Each new generation builds on the work of the previous one, gaining new perspective. New verbs are introduced. We Google strange and dangerous places. We tweet mindlessly to the cosmos. We Facebook our own grandmothers. I, for one, don’t want to be left behind.

Daniel H. Wilson is an American New York Times bestselling author, television host, and robotics engineer. He earned a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Masters degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. His techno-thriller novels include AMPED, A Boy and His Bot, Robopocalypse: A Novel, and Robogenesis. His latest novel is the science fiction work, Hole in the Sky. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Follow him on Facebook.

Source for Image: Author’s Website  Photo credit: Anna Long

by Amanda Patterson

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