Time & Perspective Quote by Alan Dean Foster

Foster’s warning lands like a craft note and a quiet rebuke to the whole content economy: if you’re chasing what’s “hot,” you’re already late. Trends move at the speed of marketing decks and social feeds; novels and films move at the speed of actual production. By the time a writer finishes a manuscript, an editor acquires it, and a publisher schedules it, the cultural moment that triggered the pitch has usually mutated or evaporated. “Write to the trend” isn’t just artistically timid; it’s strategically naïve.

The subtext is also about authority. Trend-chasing hands your creative compass to gatekeepers and algorithms, which means your work becomes a secondhand version of someone else’s appetite. Foster, a famously prolific science fiction and tie-in writer, understands both the industrial side of storytelling and the trap of becoming a human echo. His career sits at the intersection of imaginative world-building and marketplace constraints; the line reads like a veteran’s hard-earned refusal to let commerce pretend it’s inspiration.

There’s an implicit alternative embedded in the admonition: write to what you can see beyond the trend. Genre fiction, especially SF, has always been at its best when it’s not parroting the moment but stress-testing it, asking what today’s fashion reveals about tomorrow’s fear. Foster’s intent isn’t romantic anti-market purity. It’s a practical bet on durability: originality compounds, imitation expires.