Science Fiction Quotes - Page 8

I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief...of a party...of a finance system..of a power. All I see is privilege and its consequences. States are not in my opinion composed of structures supporting privilege but of structures denying it...in other words deciding who is not invited to the table.

Robert Jackson Bennett

–It’s not Sci-Fi, we insist, It’s SF.Every time you say that a Venusian Slime Boy dies, you know.

the crescent sun is high, the moon low; life is not for the faint-hearted; so why the fuck should art be?

This is the fiction that I’m referring to as rhapsody, this stitching of mimetic representation, oneiric imagery, ludic rules, allegoric morals, satiric critique and diegetic story into complex quiltings of narrative.

– No SF novel ever won the Booker, growls a prowling clansman on his way into the SF Café.The librarian swings a shotgun from inside her longcoat, blasts the bullshit axiom from the air. Screw the Booker, she thinks. She’d rather have a hookah.

Fuck the epistemic modality; this is alethic modality we’re talking now, not factuality but possibility.

We have to destroy the radioactive brain of Madame Curie.

A. Lee Martinez

Soylent Brown? It ain’t people, but it comes from them.

I learned as a kid that homo sapiens would rather fight other homo sapiens than microbes. For one thing, it’s easier. And there’s something satisfying about knowing somebody else is the bad guy and seeing them laid out on the street in front of you. Something human.Microbes? The little bastards just go hide, multiply, and come back to bite you when you least expect it.

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness.

He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence was lost it was never regained.So he took his son fishing and strolled along the river and pretended as though the galaxy wasn’t on fire.

People who couldn't imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn't need to imagine, because they already were. She'd said it was always a mistake, to believe those people were different, special, infected with something that was inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally other. Which reminded her of what her mother had said about Corbell Picket. That evil wasn't glamorous, but just the result of ordinary half-assed badness, high school badness, given enough room, however that might happen, to become its bigger self. Bigger, with more horrible results, but never more than the cumulative weight of ordinary human baseness.

Xander, there are two certainties in life--death and truth. They will both pursue you to your grave. There is no escaping them. But we run from them anyway in hopes that somehow we can slip by unnoticed. In the end, one or both of them catch up. Running doesn't solve anything.

I shot the first planet this afternoon.

Andrew J. Patrick

hand. I was charged with organizing the messages: descriptions of the creatures, descriptions of their space vessels, descriptions of their conveyances, of their weapons, of their movements. Positions of our soldiers, of our allies’ soldiers. Troop movements. New arrivals of space vessels. Reports of casualties. Dear God, the casualties. And their descriptions. Charred piles of ash; bloodless carcases; crumpled, broken bodies; crushed jelly; roasted, dead meat. All…in these hands.

Stephanie Osborn

Wait awhile, and everything will change."~'Griblich

Stephanie Osborn

...and now over to our foriegn allegory correspondant, Barv Tweezman." ~The Shielding of Mortimer Townes

Montgomery Thompson

Unearth marvels as you walk the path,Stand in awe,Therein is the joy of life.

Barbara Neville

He’s as tense as I am, maybe even more so, but it’s so hard to reconcile that with the serenity of weightlessness. His faux-blond hair is floating out away from his head. He’s wearing a worn, much-mended, and too-large shirt his friend in town must’ve found for him to help him blend in. He looks nothing like the Romeo who dragged me off the base, nothing like the Cormac who threw himself between his own people and me. It’s like that guy’s gone, and I killed him.

Oh, oh. My heart starts that quivering, fluttering thing it does whenever he hints at his desire for me. Lacing his fingers through mine, he moves to close the gap between us. I know he’s only holding my hand, but it’s the manner in which his fingers curl around mine, and the way his eyes bore into me that makes it seem much more intimate.

Secrets, however long they are kept, usually still manage to be brought to light. The best you can hope for is that you’ll be in control of when a secret gets out, not if it does.” -Melody in CHIMERA-

What's it like to be a living legend? A lot fucking better than being a dead one..." Geordie Selwyn, Appetite for Corruption

I won’t pressure you, Ari, but I’m not opposed to subtle acts of persuasion.

Shunting closer, I snuggle into his chest, soaking up his fresh woodsy scent. His arms encircle me and pull me close. “You always smell like home,” I whisper under my breath. Smooth, soft fingers tilt my chin upward, and I’m startled when my face meets his. Tears glisten in his eyes as he looks at me adoringly. Pressing his forehead to mine, he kisses me sweetly, his lips making brisk tantalizing sweeps across my mouth.“My heart is your home,” he whispers, his voice breathless. “It always will be.

Imagine a perfect world

Wit had conquered science by laughing it out of court.

Philip Schuyler Allen

There are many places that are not made for staying," Heckleck said. "They are too harsh, too hard, and too far away from whatever you call home. You don't root where you don't have to, unless you're unluck.

Cecil Castellucci

One moment I was sitting in your ship feeling very depressed, and the next moment I was standing here feeling utterly miserable. An Improbability Field I expect.

Perfection all the time would drive them mad. For every perfect little town, there's something ugly underneath. No dream without the nightmare.

In turkle time a lin is the briefest moment that can just about be measured. Ninety lins make a tikk, one hundred tikks make a lod, thirty eight lods make a yan, the time it takes the planet Ankor to make one complete turn in the path of the star, Ruru, its main source of light and warmth. Ten yans make a zac. Six zacs make a yod, twenty yods make a zik. Twelve ziks make a zan. Sixteen zans make a nik.

And so the result of several years of Everybody Shareskyism, other than slaughtering people, is for everybody to stand around and stare blankly at each other.

Lao She

Perhaps the god who had made the Cat People intended them as a joke. They had schools, but no education; politicians but no government; people, but no personal integrity; faces, but no concept of face. One had to admit that their god had gone a little too far with his little joke.

Lao She

Flammflorbs, archypodsplays, clinker crabs, dorsaldorydabbs, mingslakks, linglimes, occocobbers, firgengobblers, smitesnides, orkusta shelled bunkbarnacles, balootabinks, jorgentua jellyfish, tungol widders, teleosti chimaras, and things stranger, yet to be named, Klubbe and his crew members observed through their portholes, lit by the lamps of their submarine's lanterns.

I understand now that you cannot fight for a noble cause with heinous actions.

Andre Mikhailovich Solonitsyn

Of course, if we do find the Great Glom, we will see other gloms as well," said Dottia. "I mean, he will not exist alone, will he? Mythic creatures like him are often spoken of as if they did exist alone, and they were born unique, hatched from a singular egg, out of nowhere, with no parents, mate or offspring. He will have a female glom as his wife, his own glom children, and an entire race of gloms as his subjects." "Certainly, he will, I agree," said Klubbe.

God exists. He has one wicked since of humor, and right now he’s having a grand old time punking the planet.

I killed a couple of people,” Scooter said. “Wanna play cards?

The world turns because Man is inspired to better himself

The only thing what happens in the Houses of Parliament is the debate about foxes, badgers and moles

You can scoff at opinions. You can reject hypotheses. You can discard theories out of hand. But you cannot reject the facts

Veins stood out in her temples as she struggled against her silence. No one noticed. Those words had already been used up, spent, thrown out into the atmosphere to dissipate without effect.

Danielle Ste. Just

John raised an eyebrow. “So you wouldn’t date someone like you?”“Oh, hell, no. I’m insane, but that would be nuts.

I have been and always shall be your friend.

The Intrepid Mr. Spock

They were more than partners, more than brothers; they were very nearly the same person.

Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?”“It wouldn’t be fair to rank them.” Caleb gunned the engine.

Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly.'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I’m too skeptical, but I can’t take it too seriously.'Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.'Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children’s bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You’re probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I’d hate to want to take that seriously.'("The Venus Hunters")

Caleb!” The sharp, forceful tone demanded he halt. He found he had complied, but did not turn around. His voice sounded low and hoarse, likely because he couldn’t breathe. “Alex, I can’t.

Is it painful?" the groundskeeper asked. "I am asking for science.

January took a breath, realizing it had been a cause from her holding it in, trying to work through the puzzle she faced. If he’s a Ghost, why was she sent on a mission to kill him?

Samantha LaFantasie

By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.

Lifting my hands from the keyboard, I fold them in my lap and tilt back my desk chair. I think, I could do it. I could turn back time.

Sometimes he’d dream of hunting for Adam the Usurper twenty years in the future, or of Doctor Simmons sending Aero to burrow into his head and steal his most secret thoughts and desires.

The ultimate irony in this vast struggle (available to audience members who want to think about it but easily ignored by those who accept the semi-happy ending ) is the irony in many time loop (or ontological paradox) stories: John Connor has created himself (though he has not gone as far as the character in Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” who is both his own father and mother). Far worse, by saving his mother’s life and ensuring the destruction of the Terminator, John Connor has created Skynet just as surely as Skynet has created John Connor by trying to kill him. Both Connor and Skynet exist in a time loop without outside causality. The Terminator’s surviving arm makes Skynet possible, but it is never invented, only found and back-engineered. Kyle Reese comes across time for Sarah Connor because of a picture and because John Connor asks him to, but neither the picture nor John Connor would exist if Reese had not already gone back in time. The simplest way to save the world is to let the Terminator kill Sarah Connor. Then (in all probability), no one would find a piece of the advanced technology, and Skynet could not be built. But, Cameron’s plot suggests, the “perils to come that would result from our hubris and blind faith in technology” may be inescapable, a time loop, a feedback loop, leading directly if not necessarily inevitably to destruction."Fighting the History Wars on the Big Screen: From the Terminator to Avatar" from The Films of James Cameron

Ace G. Pilkington

illustration Speaking before the Marion Hobby Club Marion, OH 2013 This writer is looking for an agent.An old adage warns: If you don't know your history, you will be forever condemned to repeat it. Likewise, if you don't know your science fiction, and heed its warnings, you could condemn the Earth to future catastrophe.

I think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books

China Miéville

I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult doing it I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.

They worried to an excessive degree about getting gender correct, as if elves gave a shit. Humans could keep their concerns about everyone’s genitalia to themselves.

Sabrina Zbasnik

Sanity is over-rated. It lacks color.

What’s more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones?

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