All Quotes By Tag: Science-fiction

“She looked at her right hand, where the index finger was cut to a stump. Some said she lost it in an accident, when she was playing soldier with a live grenade. Others said she was taught a lesson by the law, and they took her trigger finger to make her keep on learning. Those were the lessons the Coilhunter liked. Why, he was quite the teacher himself.”

“Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, “the love of nature” seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.”

“If we can’t write diversity into sci-fi, then what’s the point? You don’t create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.”

“I would like [my readers] to better understand human beings and human life as a result of having read [my] stories. I’d like them to feel that this was an experience that made things better for them and an experience that gave them hope. I think that the kind of things that we talk about at this conference — fantasy very much so, science fiction, and even horror — the message that we’re sending is the reverse of the message sent by what is called “realistic fiction.” (I happen to think that realistic fiction is not, in fact, realistic, but that’s a side issue.) And what we are saying is that it doesn’t have to be like this: things can be different. Our society can be changed. Maybe it’s worse, maybe it’s better. Maybe it’s a higher civilization, maybe it’s a barbaric civilization. But it doesn’t have to be the way it is now. Things can change. And we’re also saying things can change for you in your life. Look at the difference between Severian the apprentice and Severian the Autarch [in The Book of the New Sun], for example. The difference beteween Silk as an augur and Silk as calde [in The Book of the Long Sun]. You see?We don’t always have to be this. There can be something else. We can stop doing the thing that we’re doing. Moms Mabley had a great line in some movie or other — she said, “You keep on doing what you been doing and you’re gonna keep on gettin’ what you been gettin’.” And we don’t have to keep on doing what we’ve been doing. We can do something else if we don’t like what we’re gettin’. I think a lot of the purpose of fiction ought to be to tell people that.”

“Then, what’s the purpose of the mission?”“To save us all.”“You can’t save all of us if you murder them.”

“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.”

“[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they’re writing it!”

“Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.”

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”

“Where have all the Fembots gone?”

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”

“We’d stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You’d think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn’t.”

“The weeds are like sundogs. They thrive on disaster. They move in anywhere systems break down. After this disaster the plants that grow fastest on scorched earth will thrive. . . . ‘ ¶ ‘More weeds,’ Vera concluded.”

“i wonder what it’s like. it’s impossible to imagine. when u have only known the absence of a thing, how do u construct its feeling in ur mind?”

“Knowledge is like an endless resource; a well of water that satisfies the innate thirst of the growing human soul. Therefore never stop learning… because the day you do, you will also stop maturing.”