Science Fiction Quotes - Page 16

As for you Rose Tyler you gave up on me! That's rude. Is all I am rude and not ginger?" The Doctor

A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.

Theodore Sturgeon

Meanwhile here I am- Earthborn woman, a mere barbaric maula, geting deeper into Imperial Space with each passing light second. I should be trembling with fear, I suppouse. No. Let the Emperor tremble. Laylah is here!

Robert Silverberg

Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell.

Poul Anderson

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Arkady looked at the other man. he felt that he was actually seeing him as a physical being for the first time.....He tried to imagine that body with Bella, with any woman, and found the idea...not repulsive exactly, but incomprehensible. How would it work exactly? And how would either of them, knowing nothing of their lover's body, needs and desires, ever be able to satisfy the other?

Chris Moriarty

For so long considered a second-rate category to other writing genres, Science Fiction should be allotted its true place in literature. The reason Science Fiction is so important is because SF authors create the future. They bring through ideas, technology, and new thought, put it all down in written and spoken word, and then send it out into mass consciousness. When enough people (a critical mass) think about and truly consider the plausibility of a concept, it becomes reality. Think William Gibson, who in 1982's "Burning Chrome" coined "cyberspace". Few grasped the concept at the time, but as the internet took hold in the 1990's, we not only had a word to describe our experience, we had a definition and an understanding, as well. Coincidence?

Joseph Duda

Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'Mentor'. The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better.

Arthur C. Clarke

To be in a war, you must learn the rules of survival… to win a war, you must break every fucking one of those rules.

A.J. Vega

When the nurse leaves, Doctor Rose mouths, “Act like you’re in pain.” Then she mimics a painful expression in case Summer doesn’t understand. On the contrary, Summer’s an expert at interpreting body language and reading lips. It’s all thanks to her observant nature while enslaved on the Cosmos. Who else could tell that Peter’s discomfort is due to him wearing the same pair of underwear for a week straight? Ah, yes, she always knew when day six and seven approached. She watched the crew member with much amusement as he waddled, pulled wedgies, and scratched his bum relentlessly. Not that anyone else cared to know that little nugget of information.

Laura Kreitzer

If you ordered up a whore here, you'd probably get a theater major doing Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson. I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a Hershey bar?" His eyes lit up for a moment. "I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a whore and a Hershey bar?

Kage Baker

Brahman and I are buddies.

Stephen Beam

For me, the best thing about Cyberpunk is that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which used to terrify me. Now I just imagine the whole thing is two miles below the moon’s surface, and that half the people’s right-brains have been eaten by roboticized steel rats. And suddenly it’s interesting again.

Rudy Rucker

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.

E.M. Forster

Saul's vitals were not human, but familiar:he never told me he was from another world:I never told him I was from his future.

Joe Haldeman

You know, when I was in Paris, seeing Linter for the first time, I was standing at the top of some steps in the courtyard where Linter's place was, and I looked across it and there was a little notice on the wall saying it was forbidden to take photographs of the courtyard without the man's permission. [..] They want to own the light!

Iain Banks

A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.

Philip K Dick

I hope I died honorably. I have a great deal to atone for. - Eler Nersal

Lynda Williams

I looked at Victor, my heart swelling from the emotion. “When I die, please do the same ceremony for me,” I whispered, choking up. “This is the most captivating and emotional event I have ever been part of.”“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask somebody else for that because if you die before me I won’t survive it.” He kissed the tip of my nose. I gazed at him with so much love that my heart almost burst out of my chest.

A.B. Whelan

Truth or dare...truth ain't fair. Marshal Robert Quantrell - Belle Starr: Dead Man's Hand (work in progress)

Belinda McBride

I never sleep. Like the dolphin and the spiny anteater, I don't experience REM. Unlike the dreamless mammals, I'm a construct. I am a living program inside a vast network of electronic impulses known as the LINK. In that datastream I've uncovered the meaning of another kind of dreaming--that of a fond hope or aspiration, a yearning, a desire, or a passion. This much I have. When I dream, I dream of Mecca.

Lyda Morehouse

It is as it is. Betren son of Bromwell Defender of Delmarath

Cynthia Willerth

The look in his eyes reminded me of myself. We were both alone in a new environment, trapped by our circumstances, and we both needed to grow up much faster than planned. Who knew that once I’d have something common with a deer.

A.B. Whelan

In the desert there is no sign that says, 'Thou shalt not eat stones.

Margaret Atwood

Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there....

Lois McMaster Bujold

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

Bruce Sterling

The kid is scary.

Orson Scott Card

These people were the first to master a new kind of late twentieth-century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed.

J.G. Ballard

I would wish you gods speed but I don’t want you to waste time looking for him.

Steve Merrick

He felt a psychosomatic rush of emptiness before he spoke. “Since we are getting to the real point, I am not stupid John. And it would be foolish to think me ignorant. Isn’t this about the Science Nation interview? Isn’t this because I mistakenly used the word “soul?” Isn’t this about you and the others thinking somewhere along the lines, I had gained an imaginary soul? We all know when you gain a soul, you lose a mind. Don’t we john?” John hesitated briefly staring at Roma. “I believe so yes. Souls are luxuries for speculative minds. Real scientists can’t afford such luxuries. They have the world to save.”Roma narrowed his eyes. “Or destroy.

Dew Platt

... we have created a man with not one brain but two. ... This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. ... The patient's biological brain is the peripheral terminal -- the only peripheral terminal -- for the new computer. ... And therefore the patient's biological brain, indeed his whole body, has become a terminal for the new computer. We have created a man who is one single, large, complex computer terminal. The patient is a read-out device for the new computer, and is helpless to control the readout as a TV screen is helpless to control the information presented on it.

Michael Crichton

The sound came again. There was a whistle to it, and a moan. It was almost a hiss, and it could’ve been a strangled gasp. Above all, it was quiet, and it seemed to have no source. It whispered.

Cherie Priest

We shall give up the things of childhood -- gods and demons, planets and suns, guilts and regrets.

Norman Spinrad

Life is a sewer and we are all but swimmers within it. Smart people do the backstroke. (In other words you gotta have a giggle.)

Stephen B. Pearl

I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes.

Frank Herbert

Where was this written? I wondered. Where in the Talmud or the Koran or the Bible did it say, "Lo, and Satan fetcheth the coffee for the Antichrist and her minions"?

Lyda Morehouse

My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there's nothing you can do to make it happen faster.

Octavia E. Butler

..the happy hum of humanity.

Arthur C. Clarke

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

Warren Ellis

Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.

Brian W. Aldiss

Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.

Robert A. Heinlein

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The Scientific Method is a wonderful tool as long as you don't care which way the outcome turns; however, this process fails the second one's perception interferes with the interpretation of data. This is why I don’t take anything in life as an absolute…even if someone can “prove” it “scientifically.

Cristina Marrero

They knew where they were headed but they didn’t know where they were going. Retina shrugged the thought. Roma complained about the possibility they were walking into a trap. After all, he was one of the scientists that decided Solstice’s fate. Retina was adamant no one knew him. Lorenzo didn’t care about anything much but reaching Zharfar after Retina surgically removed his Unicell Groper. They were headed to Africa in what seemed a semi commercial private plane. Eight people including the pilots travelled. They weren’t supposed to know any more particulars. But Lorenzo’s watch placed the coordinates in both numbers and words. They were in West Africa, country Nigeria, state Osun, and township Isura. None of them had ever heard of it, the town, but they were there. And they had travelled for miles, over highly forested nonresidential areas and mountain peaks before they stopped. Wherever they were going was greatly isolated, Roma thought.

Dew Platt

The journey is the reward.

Erik Daniel Shein

Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable.Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow.And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness.The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.

Ashim Shanker

There is no time for fear. It's much too interesting.

Cordwainer Smith

By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the place wasn't the prepackaged, old-shit-on-the-wall nostalgia that came with so many chain restaurants. The cafe was just old, and everything about it said old. But Jon liked it that way, if only because it kept the tourists away and spared him from hearing imported ignorance when there was plenty of local ignorance to go around.

Scott B. Pruden

Yeye shifted in her seat as Roma stared down at her angrily. “There are inter-realm laws I must abide by, that the soul must abide by as well when it comes to an appointed manifestation. Whoever was in the world before can not go into the new world. That identity must be forsaken. It must—”“Forsaken or forgotten?” Roma barked. “Forsaken,” Yeye answered. “Unless you’re putting this soul into a blank state like that of a child, it can not be forgotten. It has to be forsaken. That’s the rule or you get no soul.” “So you’re telling me that this soul will remember but will never be able to be that person it was?” Roma asked. “I’m telling you a new memory must be formed with absolutely no reference to the previous.” “What the freak is that?” Roma asked, visibly agitated. “You can form new memories while holding on to preexisting ones.” Yeye stood. “Yes Roma, you’re right. But you can also form new memories while you are unable to access the previous ones.” “Such it would have a drive that belongs to it but would never be able to access or be forbidden to access it?” Roma asked. Yeye’s voice was low. “I’m afraid that’s the way it is going to have to be.” Roma shook his head vehemently. “Exactly which way is that Yeye. Exactly which way is that in common terms?” Yeye spoke in her most resolute tone yet. “You will never be able to know whether or not this soul is Mara.” Roma gained silence, breathing in and out rapidly. “We’re getting out of this damned Zharfar,” he said as he stormed out.

Dew Platt

The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they did.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Love is the net profit on life.

Sharon L. Reddy

The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales'. And even this is objectionable, since many science fiction stories take place in the present or the past, far and near.

Philip José Farmer

Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.

Arthur C. Clarke

May the gods ignore you.

Lynda Williams

He holds her with the strength of a million-man army, but with all the tenderness of her heart lying naked in the palms of his hands.

Laura Kreitzer

England was a cold, backward, rebellious little kingdom. It's king: Henry the Eighth, remembered principally for his six wives and the chicken legs clutched in his fat fists.

Kage Baker

Niko was a man of few words and flying, sugary snacks. I like that in a human. ~Catcher

Rob Thurman

Almsgiving is a major tenet of Islam. It's also a kick in the pants of the highest order. Nothing is as cool as skimming off a couple of hundred thousand from some multinational corporation and handing it out to random strangers. Or writing a harmless little virus that makes credit counters "forget" to send a surcharge back to the bank after each purchase. Oh, sure, technically I'm supposed to give away my own money, but whatever. I'm sure Allah gets the spirit of what I'm doing here.

Lyda Morehouse

A brief life burns brightly.

Stephen Baxter

I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.—John Cavil, Cylon Model Number One, “No Exit

Patrick Di Justo

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Science Fiction Quotes - Page 16

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