Best 1974 quotes in «science fiction quotes» category

Why aren’t you smiling?” Cameron asks. She picks up the Astropad and stops the video. “Because this is the beginning, not the end.

Why didn’t you call me on the tech phone and tell me you were here?” An eternity seemed to pass before he spoke again. “Because you would’ve told me no.

Why did some people experience horror and repeat it while others fought to protect others from it?

why Human should not look at the past?

Why is the public so blindly self-destructive? So willing to enslave itself for a free trinket or empty promise?

Why is this ship so old and shitty?

Why?” Riko asked. “For the war. We will hit them before they have a chance to hit us.” She was terrified. “What? No. We can’t start a war.” Oshiro grinned. “Don’t you see? The war has already started. We’re going to end it.

Why travel to the Moon or Mars if we only continue our wars there with Russia or China or Africa? Why build rockets at all? For fun? For adventure? Or is this the same process that sends the salmons back upstream year after year to spawn and die - a subliminal urge in mankind to spread, in self-preservation, to the stars? Are we then secretly fearful that one day the sun might freeze and the the earth grow cold or the sun explode in a terrific thermal cataclysm and burn down our house of cards?

Will Cato's alien buddies come en masse and invade Earth? He's not sure but he'll try to keep humanity in the loop.

Why won’t you look at me?” she murmurs. He doesn’t speak, seemingly at a loss for words. “It’s my scars.” It comes out as barely a whisper. Horror spasms across his face. “What? No,” he says, a bit breathless. “You’re beautiful. All of you.

Why? Why did you kill them?” He laughed, recognizing it bore a frightening coldness. “Because you walked through the wrong door, and they paid you to do it. You will be a testament to the terror that arrives the moment you or anyone else crosses the invisible line you didn’t know existed until tonight. Spread the word.

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? [...] Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering strokes of her memories, will they recall that moment long ago when she stood by the window, guilt ridden and confused, and watched as the tadr bird circled the cistern? No, it is not possible. [...] But I will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at that moment they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.

Wish me good luck, please,” I whisper. “On one condition,” Philemone says. “Remember, what you call luck is the meeting of opportunity and flexibility.” I smile, weakly. “Good luck,” she says. “Now go.

With all those mutants out there, who would chance going beyond the Perimeter after dark?” — Jimbo

Wit had conquered science by laughing it out of court.

[W]ith a heavy heart, we are biding farewell to those entries that were written in rhyming slang, which utilized Atbash cyphering, and which assumed expert knowledge of American Sign Language and the inner intricacies of the I Ching from its readers.

With biting solemnity he spoke. “What are you holding on to as Mara? Why are you holding on to what does not exist and was once known? Why not let her be dusts to the winds of Teracia, insignificant in the eyes of what Atheists believe?” Teracia was home to the American Spiritualist headquarters and a very large expanse of forestry. Roma, to keep Mara’s last wishes had visited Teracia, against his Atheist believes, to spread her ashes so her soul may roam free. What soared through Roma was more sadness than anger in the moment. But the anger was enough to push him head first into Retina. “How dare you? You stupid son of a bitch…Ahh!” The force that took Roma forward took them over the compliant material that was the railing and they became subject to gravity. The impact resisting, antigravity flooring broke the majority of their fall. And as Roma traveled the approximately fifteen inches resistance flight back in the air, “I’ll kill you,” he told Retina. While Retina was silently thanking Dr. Hunter, a QueXtgen scientist who had just saved their lives without knowing it, for the scientific design of the house, “I’ll kill you…” Roma said as his body touched the floor, before losing consciousness.

With faces entirely invisible through suits, it was hard to be sure, but my impression was that he was watching me and copying my every move. I felt this proved he was intelligent.

Within that very moment, the moment we were in lasted for eternity.

Without ethics, science would be cruelty.

Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in caves ... if we weren't already extinct.

With the warmth of an alien sun on his back, Jacob took a deep breath at the door and knocked.

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.

Yes, 1960’s North American sitcoms have led me to study the United States 1920’s and 1930’s crime bosses— QET Jenkins

Yatima found verself gazing at a red-tinged cluster of pulsing organic parts, a translucent confusion of fluids and tissue. Sections divided, dissolved, reorganised. It looked like a flesher embryo – though not quite a realist portrait. The imaging technique kept changing, revealing different structures: Yatima saw hints of delicate limbs and organs caught in slices of transmitted dark; a stark silhouette of bones in an X-ray flash; the finely branched network of the nervous system bursting into view as a filigreed shadow, shrinking from myelin to lipids to a scatter of vesicled neurotransmitters against a radio-frequency MRI chirp. There were two bodies now. Twins? One was larger, though – sometimes much larger. The two kept changing places, twisting around each other, shrinking or growing in stroboscopic leaps while the wavelengths of the image stuttered across the spectrum. One flesher child was turning into a creature of glass, nerves and blood vessels vitrifying into optical fibres. A sudden, startling white-light image showed living, breathing Siamese twins, impossibly transected to expose raw pink and grey muscles working side by side with shape-memory alloys and piezoelectric actuators, flesher and gleisner anatomies interpenetrating. The scene spun and morphed into a lone robot child in a flesher's womb; spun again to show a luminous map of a citizen's mind embedded in the same woman's brain; zoomed out to place her, curled, in a cocoon of optical and electronic cables. Then a swarm of nanomachines burst through her skin, and everything scattered into a cloud of grey dust. Two flesher children walked side by side, hand in hand. Or father and son, gleisner and flesher, citizen and gleisner... Yatima gave up trying to pin them down, and let the impressions flow through ver. The figures strode calmly along a city's main street, while towers rose and crumbled around them, jungle and desert advanced and retreated. The artwork, unbidden, sent Yatima's viewpoint wheeling around the figures. Ve saw them exchanging glances, touches, kisses – and blows, awkwardly, their right arms fused at the wrists. Making peace and melting together. The smaller lifting the larger on to vis shoulders – then the passenger's height flowing down to the bearer like an hourglass's sand.

Yes, rules are made to be broken -- but ONLY if you have a damn good reason for doing it.

Yesterday, here in the middle of the City, I saw a wolf turn into a Russian ex-gymnast and hand over a business card that read YOUR OWN PERSONAL TRANSHUMAN SECURITY WHORE! STERILIZED INNARDS! ACCEPTS ALL CREDIT CARDS to a large man who had trained attack cancers on his face and possessed seventy-five indentured Komodo Dragons instead of legs. And they had sex. Right in front of me. And six of the Komodo Dragons spat napalm on my new shoes.

Yes, she loved her ship more than she had loved him. But what she loved even more was what it gave her: freedom, and the key to the marvels of space. It gave her the stars, and she doubted she could ever love anything or anyone more than she loved the stars.

Yet, if there is the possibility of this satisfaction from accurate prophecy in science fiction, there is also the reverse. Science fiction offers its writers chances of embarrassment that no other form of fiction does. After all, if we may prove accurate in our predictions, we may prove inaccurate as well, sometimes ludicrously so.

Y lo peor es que hiciste que se disculpara. [...] La hiciste pedir perdón por su enfermedad. Por su valor. Hiciste que le diera vergüenza morirse.

You already know what the machine will write on your arm. That lie you’ve been telling yourself—you know what it is. That blind spot is not really a blind spot—you’re choosing to look away. Perhaps more to the point, you already know whether you want to see it. You already know whether you’re going to use the machine. So why are you still reading this?

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.

You brothers-such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilized. He thought I was joking, I wasn't." - Malcador

You aren't alone. You aren't one anymore. It's the two of us. Together. We do this together. That was the plan. That was your promise and I count on you.

You are Zyon's daughter. You are a soul reader. This trip is more than just a vacation," Jadan said firmly. "You might feel like postponing it now, but we need to look for the medallion while we are in that region. Joe will keep an eye on everything. Plus, your mom will know what to do. I can even call for backup.

You ask me to make peace with the monsters who did this?” She didn’t even look around at ‘this.’ “Yes. The alternative is extinction. There’s no coming back from that—no new weapon to fire when no one is left and you’ve no universe left to fire it in.

You can dance. You can make me laugh. You've got x-ray eyes. You know how to sing. You're a diplomat. You've got it all. Everybody loves you. You can charm the birds out of the sky, But I, I've got one thing. You always know just what to say And when to go, But I've got one thing. You can see in the dark, But I've got one thing: I loved you better. Last night I woke up, Saw this angel. He flew in my window. And he said, Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh?" And I looked around and said, Who me?" And he said, "The higher you fly, the faster you fall." He said, "Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity's rainbow. Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity's Angel.

You can make a story mean anything Meoraq. But that's the think with you religious people, isn't it? God is this glorious intangibility, so no proof becomes proof just by how you spin it.

You can make a story mean anything, Meoraq. But that's the thing with you religious people, isn't it? God is this glorious intangibility, so no proof becomes proof just by how you spin it.

You can not go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after.

You cannot escape your fate.” Though I stare at the grave of Thomas Leblanc, the words are meant for me. Thomas and I were, in a moment, the same. We were victims and we were villains. We’d kept silent when we should have spoken out

You can make technology as smart as you want, but you can bet bank humans will be stupid about it.

You can only rise so far by climbing on others’ shoulders, you know.

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

You couldn’t just tell an octillion atoms to drop whatever they were doing, rearrange themselves into a completely new configuration and do some scouting for you without consequence.

You can’t keep jumping from reality to reality in hopes of finding one that you can fix. Or one that is perfect for you. No reality is perfect. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be. You have to stand and face reality.

You could've at least let me know you weren't dead by the way. I was actually kind of sad about that." "That's a pretty incredible sentiment, coming from you.

You can't change physics; but you can ride it like a bull.

You can't show me the Earth from space and fly right past the moon, entice me into this magical machine and invite me to come with you, and then ask me to stay behind!

You’d be surprised what an eleven-year-old can get away with.” —Tuppence