Best 1974 quotes in «science fiction quotes» category

I don't like killing, but I'm good at it. Murder isn't so bad from a distance, just shapes popping up in my scope. Close-up work though - a garrotte around a target's neck or a knife in their heart - it's not for me. Too much empathy, that's my problem. Usually. But not today. Today is different . . .

I don't pay much attention to the distinction between fantasy and science fiction–or between “genre” and “mainstream” for that matter. For me, all fiction is about prizing the logic of metaphors-which is the logic of narratives in general–over reality, which is irreducibly random and senseless. We spend our entire lives trying to tell stories about ourselves–they’re the essence of memory. It is how we make living in this unfeeling accidental universe tolerable. That we call such a tendency “the narrative fallacy” doesn’t mean it doesn’t also touch upon some aspect of the truth. Some stories simply literalize their metaphors a bit more explicitly.

I don't suppose", Cheris said to the servitor, "you know what resources I'm allowed to include in my proposal?" ... "Any plan you can induce Kel command to accept is permitted," it said: not quite a tautology.

I don't think I've actually seen you smile before, " Wyatt observed. "This woman must be the real deal to teach you how to smile.

I don’t want the void. I don’t want fantasies. I want some- thing real—not another fragment of truth to puzzle over . . . .

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

I’d rather be known as a freak than a science project.

If a boy can manage to have coffee with me during the apocalypse, I know he cares. There’s not a speck of doubt in my mind. He must care.

Even grief can be selfish.

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even.

If a picture on the wall can remember, you remember that this is not the first time. If a picture on the wall can know things, you know that he has tried to leap out of that window before, and he is about to try again. He is trying to kill himself. He has tried nine times in the past fifty days. If a picture on the wall can regret, you regret this. It is a terrible waste for this man to keep trying to kill himself, since he does not at all want to die.

If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom, for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue— control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is— a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives’ labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work.

I feel like a china cup that broke and was put back together wrong.

I feel as if I've gone past the lukewarm stage that Jesus talked about in the book of Revelations and am slowly dwindling on cold. Deep down I want to change, but I don't know how. I'm the pastor. I'm supposed to know how. I hide my frustration with an obsession for Ohio State football and hours at the I Sold It on eBay internet cafe around the corner from the church.

I feel that I was possessed…possessed by demons; those who are and always are going to be, they are inviting me, they desire me and they live because of me…

If her daughter’s ship had been disintegrated in space there would never be evidence of it, never an answer to what had happened to her. If she stopped to ponder the implications she might break. And Admiral Miriam Solovy did not break.

If I can keep writing just one good page a day, I will have 15 published novels in my expected lifetime. Tick, tick, tick...

If I could make people feel, just for a day or an hour, what it’s like to love with infiniteness, then they would be animals no longer, but some greater creature, deserving of that title human. I’ve bettered a day though. On earth, they will have it thus: from birth to unavoidable death, a man is pumped so full of love that his eyes bleed rainbows and his mouth a barrel of miracles. His hands will heal then make monuments to commemorate it; they’ll press tight and pray for no man, no god but himself; and his mind… his mind will shower like spring rains. He will steal away from the shadow of ambition. He’ll be his own sun and light up the world with new marvels – be they art, philosophies, science – and in his brightness put the mundane, not himself, in shadows, and how rightfully. Each a captain and a maker, a mark-setter and stealer of shows... Earth’s skies will clap with the thunder of our majesty, not with violence, doubt, confusion, futility, and monotony; anything – anything – but the dull drone of duplication and robo-behaviour.

If I'm going to die a really ugly death, it's nice to like the person you're going to share that with.

If I’m so special, why do I have to stop being special?”, FADE by Kailin Gow

I focus all my energy into become a faster, stronger, and better version of myself.

If Jack had followed him instead of trying to reclaim his car, he would undoubtedly have voiced his disappointment that they were not yet shooting laser cannons. Frankly, Richard thought dodging the police’s bullets would be problematic enough.

I found through my travels that unusual people were their own kind of magic. Not the same kind of magic my artifacts are made from, but magic that comes in the shape of survival, endurance and a will unshaken by cruelty, tyranny or hate.

If patterns of ones and zeroes were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long strings of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?

If only she could jump into the flyer and scurry back across the mountains but she had work to do and a planet to save.

I frankly expected a far more negative reaction from you on discovering…” she glanced around the lab “…the situation. Why are you helping?” “I’m not helping—I’m merely not hindering in as strenuous a fashion as I am able.

If the only option you leave poor people with is to resort to violence in order to survive, they’ll do just that. And there are lots more poor people in this world than there are rich ones.

If the lies don't kill you, the truth will.

If there was anything the last year had taught her—if there was anything Caleb had taught her, the Metigen War had taught her—it was that perspective was everything. If you wanted to understand your enemy, you must understand that they were the hero in their own story.

If the world explore all my dark fantasy, will change for the better”.

If this is my final moment,” she says, “then I can die happy.” “Is that why you’re saying all this? Because you think we’re going to die?” “I don’t know,” she admits. “Dammit, Summer.” He clings to her waist, grip desperate, eyes heavy with torment. “You’re saying everything I want to hear, but I don’t know if I can trust it.

If you can direct the power you call up, it can do a lot.”, FADE by Kailin Gow

...If we can achieve this, then one day whole rooms, buildings, perhaps even bridges may generate their own energy, funnel it to where it is needed, detect damage, and self-heal. If this seems like science fiction, bear in mind that it is only what living materials do already.

If you can read the book and say, ‘Space Marines, YEEEAAAHHH!’ That’s Military Science Fiction.” (Brigham Young writing lecture, March 2012)

If you ever do something as comically stupid as that again, at least get it on video. You'll need a keepsake of this place when I fire your ass, and nobody will ever believe this one when you get back on the beach." Cole Benson grinned. "Right. I can't even screw up good." "Then don't screw up at all.

If you don't leave room for the unexpected to express itself in your life, you close yourself off from the possibility of miracles.

If you ever do something as cosmically stupid as that again, at least get it on video. You'll need a keepsake of this place when I fire your ass, and nobody will ever believe this one when you get back on the beach."  Cole Benson grinned. "Right. I can't even screw up good."  "Then don't screw up at all.”

If you could go back in time and redo one thing in your life, what would it be?

If you feel like you don't fit into the world you inherited it is because you were born to help create a new one.

If you ever find yourself coming out of a time machine, run. Run away as fast you can. Don't stop. Don't try to talk. Nothing good can come out of it." narrator Charles Yu, not author Charles Yu p19

If you lust for power, she will swallow you in an instant and make you her servant.

If you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snatch them from the wind. Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.

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?

If you truly love someone, you will cherish what they despise most about themselves" - Fernando Conclaves

I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.

If you want to make it human, make it whole.

I gazed at these marvels in profound silence. Words were utterly wanting to indicate the sensations of wonder I experienced. I seemed, as I stood upon that mysterious shore, as if I were some wandering inhabitant of a distant planet, present for the first time at the spectacle of some terrestrial phenomena belonging to another existence. To give body and existence to such new sensations would have required the coinage of new words - and here my feeble brain found itself wholly at fault. I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not altogether unmingled with fear!

I go on writing in both respectable and despised genres because I respect them all, rejoice in their differences, and reject only the prejudice and ignorance that dismisses any book, unread, as not worth reading." -- "On Despising Genres," essay

I get why we need to go as a couple. That way, I would be her official defender. Any move against her would be a direct insult to me.

I guess I should thank you for totally making my morning. It’s not every day a stranger notices my perspiration level. - Dr. Jeri Asher (BLACK MARIAH - A Calling)