Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.
When I go into schools to speak, I am not giving a speech - it's really a one-man show. I call it 'didactic standup.'
I am not a propagandist; my work has often had a political dimension but, hopefully, one that is not didactic and is open to interpretation.
The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.
I think public life for me has a slightly didactic role, OK.
I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to promote myself. These days there's far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won't be lost.
Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.'
Kissinger's unusually high body count and singular moral imperiousness has the effect, among his critics, of obscuring his didactic utility. An outsized personality who has committed outsized mayhem, Kissinger eclipses his own context. Yet, as animals were to the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Kissinger is good to think with.
I don't want to be a didactic voice. I like to ask more questions than I answer, just to get people thinking and to make it safe to access art.
What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.
