Science Fiction Quotes - Page 7

• Purdom has created a major body of work. Thoughtful, humane, intelligent, extrapolative, involving, his stories are exactly the sort of thing our genre exists to make possible. If you don't like Tom Purdom, you don't like science fiction. Period.

  Michael Swanwick

  Thoughtful, Intelligent, Fiction

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• The wages Haiti requires by law belong in the department of science fiction: actual wages on coffee plantations vary from $.07 to $.15 a day

  Eduardo Galeano

  Coffee, Law, Fiction

  Eduardo Galeano (1997). “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”, p.98, NYU Press

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• If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it

  Warren Ellis

  Fiction, Contemporary, Bits

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• A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick, readily available tool for an ordinary citizen to gather information on his own. In 1960, communication was a one-way street, and information was fundamentally inaccessible. The whole idea of summoning up data or reaching thousands of individuals with the touch of a finger was a science-fiction fantasy.

  Jeff Greenfield

  Communication, Home, Ideas

  Jeff Greenfield (2011). “Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reaga n”, p.36, Penguin

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• The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate.

  Grant Morrison

  Christian, Mother, Stars

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• Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.

  Walter Mosley

  Writing, Mutation, Fiction

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• Science fiction is the characteristic literary genre of the century. It is the genre that stands in opposition to literary modernism.

  David G. Hartwell

  Literary Genre, Fiction, Century

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• It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

  Isaac Asimov

  Change, Business, Mean

  "My Own View". "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction". Book edited by Robert Holdstock, 1978.

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• Very little in science fiction can transcend the gimmickry of a technical conceit, yet without that conceit at its heart a book is not truly science fiction. Furthermore, so little emerging thought and technology is employed by sf writers today that the genre is lagging far behind reality both in the cosmology area and the technology area: sf is no longer a place to experiment, but is now very derivative.

  Janet Morris

  Book, Heart, Technology

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• It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

  Martin Rees

  Fun, Fiction, Firsts

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• Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Knowledge, Science

  Isaac Asimov, Carl Howard Freedman (2005). “Conversations with Isaac Asimov”, p.176, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I don't think any religion makes any sense and I think people who are into that are really getting duped, and I don't think Judaism makes any more sense than Christianity, and I don't think Christianity makes any more sense than Scientology. But here's a guy, L. Ron Hubbard, who told all his friends, 'Look, I'm gonna start a religion, 'cause I can't make any money as a science fiction writer.' I mean, he admitted that publicly! At least with Jesus Christ, you can't go talk to the guy.

  Howard Stern

  Jesus, Mean, Thinking

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• One of the reasons I did this, because I wasn't really looking for another science fiction film, was that my daughter can see it. She's 9 and it's really a good film for all ages.

  Sigourney Weaver

  Daughter, Mother, Age

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• What's needed today, now, more than ever, is 'Star Peace' for there is an ominous, mutual threat to all science fiction. It's called 'Twilight'. And it is really, really bad.

  George Takei

  Stars, Twilight, Fiction

  "George Takei Brokers Star Peace And Calls On Star Trek And Star Wars Fans To Unite Against Twilight" by Kenji Lloyd, www.heyuguys.com. December 13, 2011.

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• I think the thing is with a movie that has this much science fiction in it; you need characters who are more science fact, if you know what I mean, than they are human.

  Joe Morton

  Character, Mean, Thinking

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• Years of science fiction have produced a mindset that it is human destiny to expand from Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, to the stars.

  Bernard M. Oliver

  Stars, Moon, Destiny

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• Nuclear terrorism is still often treated as science fiction. I wish it were. But unfortunately we live in a world of excess hazardous materials and abundant technological know-how, in which some terrorists clearly state their intention to inflict catastrophic casualties. Were such an attack to occur, it would not only cause widespread death and destruction, but would stagger the world economy... [creating] a second death toll throughout the developing world.

  Kofi Annan

  Nuclear Terrorism, Creating, Wish

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• I'm not a great science fiction fan myself. I probably feel that way about Westerns. Like I used to play Cowboys and Indians, they can act out Will and the Robot.

  Mark Goddard

  Cowboy, Play, Fans

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• We are living in a science-fiction nightmare where children are gasping for breath on bad-air days because somebody gave money to a politician. And my children and the kids of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing and eat their catch because somebody gave money to a politician.

  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  Children, Kids, Air

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• The trouble with science fiction is that you can write about everything: time, space, all the future, all the past, all of the universe, any kind of creature imaginable. That's too big. It provides no focus for the artist. An artist needs, in order to function, some narrowing of focus. Usually, in the history of art, the narrower the focus in which the artist is forced to work, the greater the art.

  Philip J. Klass

  Art, Writing, Past

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• Science fiction is what I point at when I say science fiction.

  Damon Knight

  Writing, Fiction

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• A good science fiction story is a story with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its science content.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Writing, Fiction Stories, Problem

  "The Man Who Lost the Sea".

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• Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction; we are already feeling the effects.

  Desmond Tutu

  Years, Knowing, People

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• Real science can be far stranger than science fiction and much more satisfying.

  Stephen Hawking

  Real, Science, Religion

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• I could speculate, but it would be just speculation and the kind of thing that you would get in with a science fiction story. And if I was doing a science fiction story then I would come up with what can go wrong with this system.

  Gene Wolfe

  Writing, Fiction Stories, Would Be

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