Best 1974 quotes in «science fiction quotes» category

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

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

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 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 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 had aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus; unquestionably the all-time cosmic record for poor shots.

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)

I had evolved a year too soon, and it nearly broke me

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 had become an arrow of sound aimed at the most terrible creature in the city.

I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.

I have had it with these dumb cakes on this dumb spaceship!

I have found that life has been a balanced road that continues to be obscured by the dust of prejudice and dangerous extremes; good and evil, law and chaos, faith and logic, love and hate, greed and sacrifice...For the human creature, that permanency is simply a reliving of earth and pain.

I have knowledge; I'm responsible. If I sit by and do nothing while I have the ability to change, to help, then I'm just as much a criminal as any. Power begets responsibility...You should know that.

I have no objection to the expression of political opinions in SF if they are an integral part of the story structure. I don't at all appreciate their intrusion for the purpose of converting a story into a political tract, because I consider that intellectually insulting.

I have no soul.” She couldn’t fool him into believing she could see something that he knew wasn’t there. If he had a soul he’d be able to die and try as he might, he could not.

I have spent my life battling monsters. It was only in realizing that I was the monster, and choosing to destroy her, that I could save the world.

I have zero respect for knowledge, that’s what computers are for. Imagination is the kicker because imagination can extrapolate, create and solve, Knowledge is just facts and shit. Mostly irrelevant.” Kego O'Grady in The Navigator By Steve Merrick

I have a hard time trusting a person without a couple of murders on his record, Mr. Draedax.

I have been to the speed of God, sir...and I discommend it.

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.

I have to do something about this collection of unresolved feelings before it destroys me.", Celestra Caine, FADE by Kailin Gow

I had been hobbled, perhaps even crippled by a pervasive internet society I had come to depend on and take for granted... hit enter and let Google, that twenty-first century Big Brother, take care of the rest. In the Derry of 1958, the most up-to-date computers were the size of small housing developments, and the local paper was no help. What did that leave? I remembered a sociology prof I’d had in college - a sarcastic old bastard - who used to say, When all else fails, give up and go to the library.

I,” he said, a faint note of derision in his voice, “am the least favored scion of our ruling house, House Mara Sant.” He was from Brontes, then. Which might explain the eyes…she thought again of certain differences, and suppressed a shudder. “I am a Prince of the Blood,” he continued, sounding both embittered and proud, “third in line for the Dragon Throne, and grand nephew to the Emperor. Owing to a…political dispute, I am now also an exile. Presented with a choice between resigning my commission in the na-vy and leaving to become governor of a mining planet and staying to face my uncle’s as-sassins….” He shrugged slightly, as if the choice were of no consequence. “A…political dispute?” “I gambled,” he said bluntly. “I lost.” “You seem…sanguine,” she remarked, surprise blunting the instinct to guard her tongue. “He shouldn’t have let me live.” That anyone could discuss their own murder with such cold calculation horrified her. He horrified her. She chewed her lip, digesting all that he’d told her: not merely a naval officer, but a prince—and a maverick one at that. She wondered what he could have done. “So you see,” he finished, “I’m no more free than you.” He laughed, then, but without humor. “We can be prisoners together. I am en route to a wretched planet called Tarsonis to assume governorship and as you have no other, more pressing engagement, you are coming with me.

It is as if, he thought, the mist represents my life outside of here and now, and that anything else is still "out there", to be discovered, or not.

In Sneffels Yoculis craterem kem delibat umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende, audas viator, et terrestre centrum attinges. kod feci. Arne Saknussem

I hope I died honorably. I have a great deal to atone for. - Eler Nersal

I just saved your fucking life, Mom...It's like, if you--people of a certain age--would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn't have to take these drastic measures.

I just saved your fucking life, Mom. . . . You could at least offer me an Oreo.

I know, i know. You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was younger I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the times I was fort my blunt instrument has been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hid your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

I knew revenge like the ghost of an old friend." ~ #1001

I know what I have to do. I have to protect my family in the only way that they can be protected right now. I have to play the part I was meant to play. I have to be the person the Underground tried to Fade me into being.", Celestra Caine from FADE by Kailin Gow

I know that I am going to meet a personal variation on reality; a partial view of reality. But I know also that by that partiality, that distancing from the shared experience, it will be new: a revelation. It will be a vision, a more or less powerful or haunting dream. A space-voyage through somebody else's psychic abysses. It will fall short of tragedy, because tragedy is the truth, and truth is what the very great artists, the absolute novelists, tell. It will not be truth; but it will be imagination. Truth is best. For it encompasses tragedy and partakes of the eternal joy. But very few of us know it; the best we can do is recognize it. Imagination - to me - is the next best. For it partakes of Creation, which is one aspect of the eternal joy. All the rest is either Politics or Pedantry, or Mainstream Fiction, may it rest in peace.

I like fish; no fish business for me. Tuball saying. Enzo's Lemorine pet.

I know what ails you.

I like fish; no fish business for me. Tuball's say. Enzo's Lemorine pet.

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

I let myself flop - so gently, so slowly - into my one real chair and tried to make myself understand that I was on the doorstep of the universe.

I likes me some ‘Shit Blows Up’ fiction, don’t get me wrong.

I’ll gloss right over the implication in what you said that the Reor are sentient entities—for now. Dare I ask why they gave you a copy of their universal decryption key?” Alex and Caleb shared a look, and she shrugged. “We can only speculate, but it’s possible they want us to win.” Miriam dropped her elbows on the table. “Hmm. Okay. In that case, I welcome the minerals to our side of the fight.

I’ll ask you to look at the ships arrayed against you and consider what weaponry they might possess. Weaponry strong enough to crack your hulls? I know what weaponry you bring to bear, and I assure you it will not crack ours. “Are you willing to risk the lives of thousands under your command to find out? Are you willing to risk your own life?” The silence hung across space like a shroud. “This is not over, Admiral Solovy.” “That is the first true thing you’ve said today.

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 look at the headstone of the man I’d come to see. Drawn there by a strange sense of connection. Thomas and I had hoped for mercy that never came. In this, we were brothers.

I'll show you my theory, if you show me yours.

I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.

I’ll do whatever I can to help guarantee this plan succeeds, and I’ll try to make sure I’m in the right place at the right time.” “The right place and time for what?” “If I knew that, ma’am, I probably wouldn’t need to be there.