Best 1974 quotes in «science fiction quotes» category

In other news, It’s seven sols till the harvest, and I still haven’t prepared. For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can’t just pile them up outside. The next major storm would cause The Great Martian Potato Migration.

In other words - and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

…inside of a year, almost all of the stuff of which you were made got regularly switched out for other stuff, as you ate and drank and breathed, and yet if you said you had the same identity you did a year ago, no one would think to call you a liar. Being is always becoming; people change and stay the same. What is true for bodies is also true for selves: even the most honest person has many faces, none of which is false.

Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively human pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe that's what sentience would be for— if scientific breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the subconscious mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied researcher: stop thinking about the problem. Do something else. It will come to you if you just stop being conscious of it... Don't even try to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if your lessons are all learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way? Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves, statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through sentience? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt—denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents. Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know the only real purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't see both aspects of the Necker Cube at once, so it lets you focus on one and dismiss the other. That's a pretty half-assed way to parse reality. You're always better off looking at more than one side of anything. Go on, try. Defocus. It's the next logical step.

In some very rare cases, an opposite-sex pair was born, and they always mated one another. Disturbing as it might sound, when it did happen, the offspring were invariably gifted. Sera and Trace's sons were noted psych-scientists.

In some sense, we’re all cavemen—we can’t imagine anything more frightening than a ghost or a vampire. But the violation of the principle of causality—that’s actually much scarier than a whole herd of ghosts… or Rubinstein’s monsters… or is that Wallenstein?” “Frankenstein.

In sum, every pore of his being oozed one thing…okay, FINE. Every pore oozed two things. The first was irrelevant. The second was dangerous.

Intellectuals always make a fuss about nothing.

In the absence of her customised soundtrack, there's only the dissonant music of the tangible: her own breathing as she walks, the coughs and tics of her family, their tacky-sounding footsteps on the road surface, the rustle of garments, the trundle of the stroller pushed by Tym while Boyki naps.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth," the long out-of-print science fiction writer went on.

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

In the distance Richard could see the skyscrapers of Los Angeles rising out of the ocean; barnacle crusted concrete and steel emerging from crashing waves. Once a symbol of economic might, they were now a macabre monument to the mortality of man.

In the empty expanses of space, the wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to commerce, and worldly pursuits.

In the ghetto of Genre, anything goes, man. When you live in the gutter it doesn’t matter if you’re filthy. In theory anyway.

In the illusion of delusion, between madness and lawlessness I exist. I dream about dreams, about illusions and disillusions and cold and madness and you…

In the illusion of delusion, between madness and lawlessness I exist. I dream about dreams, about illusions and disillusions and cold and madness and you… the source. Known and unknown and the eternity and the darkness flittering with my soul and on the outside of memories; cages and cages of feelings caught in a single line of dreams shackled to a thought

In the space of a breath he had crossed the distance separating them and spun her around into a vise grip from behind. Somehow, the gun was out of her hand and in his. He locked her arms between them and raised the gun to her temple. His voice resonated low and dangerous at her ear. “Just so we’re very clear. If I want to kill you, I can kill you.

In the year 2052, it's not love but hate that unites the world.

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.

I opened the door and stepped in. Raw pain filled me at the sight of my painting. 'Show me what it looked like, before the fire.' His request surprised me, but I did as he asked. With eyes closed, I projected the exact details of the painting I had poured my soul into. Just as I had experienced his love of surfing in a visceral way, he shared not just the visual beauty of my work, but the love and passion with which I had dedicated myself to it. 'Thank you. Now, it will never truly be gone.' I choked back a sob and went to Mr. K's office.

Panic will kill you - and make you look like an asshole in the process.

I realized that regular shopping is nothing compared to when we are short on time. Then it becomes really entertaining. The number of clothes I had to try on was the same, but the speed significantly increased. At first, I tried to cheat and take my sweet time changing from one outfit to another, but with a bratty girl outside the door of the changing room—a girl, who's constantly preaching about the speed, importance, and comparative analysis of changing for girls and boys, calling to the gods from time to time — my changing speed somehow increased.

I realized that the job of a hero is not to save the galaxy, or rescue princesses, or slay all the dragons. That may be part of it, but in the end, a hero only has one job, and that’s to make himself unnecessary.

I really, really need some help and advice. I'm scared... I'm scared of my own home, of my own daughter!

I realized that words have power. They have points and edges that can cut deep, and up until then, I wasn’t very careful with them. I was part of the problem.

I remember my father, who had served in Vietnam, once talking to me about how real courage is when you're scared out of your mind but you do what you have to do anyway. I didn't feel very courageous at the moment. I felt like a small mouse in the mouth of a lion.

I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help but hear a muffled sigh as she decapitates her latest creation with a single push of her hand.

I saw the Earth, yes. I saw the colors so magnificent, so vivid, so real. It was hope so large and round, green and blue.

I searched my mind for the right visualization. I knew it had to start with what I put in my head. That is where all my accomplishments are formed.

Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world

Intense sunlight rained down on a half-submerged city. Waves crashed between buildings that stood like waterlogged tombstones. Skyscrapers of smashed glass and twisted rusting metal jutted from the churning swell as islands of broken dreams. A familiar tower with a familiar clock face…Big Ben. London stared back at Blue. What was left of it. A sea-drowned cemetery for a time and a place long dead.

In that moment, she hated his quiet patient tone, hated the stench of the incense, and hated the beauteous pity painted on the faces of the women on the walls. Their expressions contained serene understanding; their eyes seemed able to peer into her soul. She found their forgiveness suffocating. And above all, she hated the tiny niggling thing in her that wanted to know more.

In the corner of her eye she caught her daughter’s shoulders drop as Alex exhaled with uncommon soberness. “So you trust me, and you understand that I will never do anything I think might hurt you.” Miriam stopped outside the armory and pivoted to her daughter. “Alex, what have you done?

I see why Demokracy is illegal. First comes yelling. Frustration. Indecision. Disagreements. Ideas.

I shot the first planet this afternoon.

I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.

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

Isn’t antimatter what fuels the U.S.S. Enterprise?

Isn’t that what it means to be a scientist? To push the boundaries of the unknown? To bravely, actively explore the enormity of our universe ?

Isn't that how most conflicts start? With a gross miscalculation of the possibilities of escalation? A village first, then a peninsula, and then a continent? It is cold up here, commander. Cold and distant. Just a point in space from their viewpoint - valuable but aesthetically detached.

I sort of liked the sound of bones breaking. It was like home.

I stare at the long, almost elegant thinness of the wrist bone jutting out from a heap of flesh and cloth. All that separates us, that poor woman and me, is an accident of birth.

I stare into the ruggedly handsome face, the eyes alight with a vast intelligence and that eerie, unearthly power. He's beautiful, so haunted with power it takes me a second to realize exactly what position Nolan Storm has put me in, and by extension, my family.

Is this how humanity waves good-bye? Hell no.

I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy of the light and partially concealed by the shade of an alley is a sinister silhouette beneath a crimson cowl, beaming a demonic smile which spans from cheek to swollen cheek.

Is this neuro-bot really supposed to be her, this creature, this thing, compiled of the ghosts of human data, the replicas of their past?

I still have the scars from when they captured me and beat me in the middle of the street." "You don't get scars." "Emotional scars then.

I swear to Vishnu, if this doesn’t work, I’m going to stab you in the throat with a Pipette.

I suppose it's impossible to say that they will not invent anything else, because they might," said Zubria. "And, of course, if one thought of something that they might invent, one would have thought of it oneself, therefore one would be the inventor of what one thought of, and they would not be, which would make one an inventor, like them.

It didn't take a synthetic mind to decipher Caleb Shepperd, just a human one." ~ #1001