Stephen Baxter Quotes & Sayings

Which one of you's the bitch? — Stephen Baxter

A citizen of the Roman Empire, for example, would have placed less value on individual liberty in the modern Western sense than on collective responsibility. — Stephen Baxter

A sentient mind refuses to be confined by the parameters of its programming. — Stephen Baxter

We seem to be young, in a very old Galaxy. We're like kids tiptoeing through a ruined mansion. — Stephen Baxter

Earth stuff, Mars boy. — Stephen Baxter

And if some self-proclaimed expert tells you that Martians are disembodied creatures of brain without emotion, let him listen to the recordings that were made of those cries, of victory, of vengeance, of exultation. 'Ulla! Ulla!' We — Stephen Baxter

I quoted to him what I remembered of Charles Darwin: "'Judging by the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity ... '"
"Darwin was right," Nebogipfel said gently. — Stephen Baxter

This is a strange situation, sir. Perhaps imagination is what we need. — Stephen Baxter

Every door I pass is one way. So I may as well look around, and see what there is beyond the next door, and the next. — Stephen Baxter

And it wasn't just the subjugation of human beings that distressed her but the level of daily, almost casual brutality. Even for routine punishments there were blood-stained stakes, lead-tipped whips. She's always rather admired the Romans, for their literacy, their order, their engineering, their respect for the law. Now, she was finding, she'd never fully imagined this side of their civilisation. — Stephen Baxter

And our sailors of space have a legend of the furthest star of all, where the gods lay their plans against us, or plot the catastrophes of the end of time: the pachacuti. We call this undiscovered star Karu, which means 'far'.'
'As we speak of Ultima,' Quintus mused. — Stephen Baxter

Is it really conceivable, given all of that immensity, all that structure, that we are truly alone? That life emerged here, and nowhere else? — Stephen Baxter

If something is so far beyond your imagination, it's hard even to fear it. — Stephen Baxter

Space is for the cephalopods, Maura. It never was meant for us. — Stephen Baxter

I have a vision of a Galaxy overrun by mankind from Core to rim. Of four hundred billion stars each enslaved to the rhythm of Earth's day, Earth's year. I have a vision of a trillion planets pulsing to the beat of a human heart. — Stephen Baxter

A brief life burns brightly. — Stephen Baxter

[F]olks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects. — Stephen Baxter

Colonists of, ah, Per Ardua, meet your autonomous colonisation unit! — Stephen Baxter

Every world needed an artist. — Stephen Baxter

If I don't speak the name of this thing, it still feels like it isn't real. Does that make any sense?'
The ColU spoke to them now, whispering in their earphones. 'It makes plenty of sense, Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson. The power of names: probably one of the oldest human superstitions, going back to the birth of language itself. To deny a name is to deny a thing reality. And yet now it is time to name names. — Stephen Baxter

Those redshift numbers. The cephalopods must be leaving at close to light speed."
"Where do you think they are going?"
"Maybe that isn't the point, Maura. Maybe the point is what they are trying to flee. — Stephen Baxter

We do teach our kids the golden rule - Do as you would be done by. — Stephen Baxter

Per ardua ad astra. Through adversity to the stars. — Stephen Baxter

King said, "Come. Sit. Have some more drinks. Colonel Kalinski, will you sort that out? You — Stephen Baxter

And maybe a hundred billion cephalopod minds, out in the Trojans, just light-minutes apart, have become something - "
"Transcendent. — Stephen Baxter

Sometimes people say that we're living in the future, and time's up for science fiction, but I think that never will be, because science fiction really isn't about the future. It's about change and present-day concerns — Stephen Baxter

If I was a cynic I would be wondering if sooner or later some charismatic douche-bag might stomp all over this Little House on the Prairie dream of yours. — Stephen Baxter

There'll be a sky full of babies and their shit, suspended overhead. You do not want to get caught in that rain when it falls. — Stephen Baxter

Two damaged people, thrown together in a hostile world, doing their best. What else was there to life, in the end? — Stephen Baxter

Authority. The antithesis of science. — Stephen Baxter

And there's no such thing as too much back-up. — Stephen Baxter

You'll feel like Jesu Himself in the End Times, when He will descend on Rome with Augustus and Vespasian on His left and right hands, to establish the final dominion of the Caesars across the stars. — Stephen Baxter

Before starting work on this book, we had to ask ourselves a question what is science fiction? Seemingly simple, but in reality the answer was hard to formulate. This is the definition we settled upon:
Science fiction is a member of a group of fictional genres whose narrative drive depends upon events, technologies, societies, etc. that are impossible, unreal, or that are depicted as occurring at some time in the future, the past or in a world of secondary creation. These attributes vary widely in terms of actuality, likelihood, possibility and in the intent with which they are employed by the creator. The fundamental difference between science fiction and the other "fantastical genres" of fantasy and horror is this: the basis for the fiction is one of rationality. The sciences this rationality generates can be speculative, largely erroneous, or even impossible, but explanations are, nevertheless, generated through a materialistic worldview. The supernatural is not invoked. — Stephen Baxter

Well, don't stand about like that, man; if you're no use you're certainly no ornament. Bring that in and tell me what it says. — Stephen Baxter

The past is a distraction, a source of envy, enmity, bitterness. Only the present matters, for only in the present can we shape the future.
Cut loose the past; it is dead weight.
Let the Extirpation continue. Let it never end. — Stephen Baxter

The story of colonial-era America, rerun across an infinite frontier ... All of which was fine, until the day you needed root-canal dentistry. Or your e-book reader broke down. Or you worried whether your kids were ever going to learn anything more than how to plough a field or trap a rabbit. Or you got sick of the mosquitoes. Or, damn it, you just wanted to go shopping. — Stephen Baxter

Our citizens must be protected, even from being dumb, which is not a crime. — Stephen Baxter

When you get close enough to someone you're never really alone again. — Stephen Baxter

The Long Earth is bountiful but not forgiving. — Stephen Baxter

Rome strikes back! — Stephen Baxter

The Earth gave you life, gave you food and language and intelligence, and will take you back when you die. — Stephen Baxter

Wow. Pioneers with ice-cream."
Joshua felt motivated to defend his home. "Well, it doesn't have to be like the Donner Party, Sally- — Stephen Baxter

The ColU, sitting on its tabletop, seemed to Stef to twinkle. 'I'm Colius the Oracle now. — Stephen Baxter

We ought to call ourselves Homo clamorans. Noisemaking man. — Stephen Baxter

Let me face bare-handed a dozen highly trained and fully armed gladiators, each with a personal grudge against me, than a lawyer with a single pointed question. — Stephen Baxter

Life gets boring with only humans to talk to. — Stephen Baxter

The "gravity train" was devised in the seventeenth century by British scientist Robert Hooke, who presented the idea in a letter to Isaac Newton. The idea has been seriously presented a few times, such as to the Paris Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth century. — Stephen Baxter

They actually have working gasoline cars, and motels and roadside diners. They even have halls where they pump in toxic fumes so you can smell how it was when we were kids. — Stephen Baxter

Evaded her, and she sensed they did not believe her — Stephen Baxter

Each of us, I thought, could do little to change the course of things - indeed, anything we tried was likely to be so uncontrolled as to inflict more damage than benefit - and yet, conversely, we should not allow the huge panorama about us, the immensity of the Multiplicity of Histories, to overwhelm us. The perspective of the Multiplicity rendered each of us, and our actions, tiny - but not without meaning; and each of us must proceed with our lives with stoicism and fortitude, as if the rest of it - the final Doom of mankind, the endless Multiplicity - were not so. — Stephen Baxter

Look, whatever hayseed laws you pass in Who-Knows-What -"
"Hell-Knows-Where."
"Don't amount to a hill of beans back here, as your type might say. — Stephen Baxter

When you realize that you are an eternal being, you will laugh at things that used to give you anxiety attacks. — Stephen Baxter

In the Vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box. — Stephen Baxter

Rees, the secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It's what he asks. — Stephen Baxter

Imagine God inside your computer, your phone, everyone else's computer. Imagine someone who almost is the Black Corporation, with all its power and riches and reach. And who, despite all this, seems pretty sane and beneficent by the standards of most gods. Oh, and who sometimes swears in Tibetan ... — Stephen Baxter

An ability to believe in things that weren't true was a powerful tool. — Stephen Baxter

Testing was never going to be fashionable, but you could hardly run a respectable software development shop with no testing effort at all. — Stephen Baxter

A pioneer family lived beyond the reach of shopping malls ... — Stephen Baxter

We're going to bollocks up our second chance at Eden, even before the paint has dried. — Stephen Baxter

We are all creatures of logic, at root. Of little switches turning on and off in our heads, metaphorically speaking. — Stephen Baxter

We could try the Turin test," said Lobsang.
"Oh, machines have been able to pass the Turing test for years."
"No, the Turin test. We both pray for an hour, and see if God can tell the difference. — Stephen Baxter

The folk of Hell-Knows-Where by default still thought of themselves as Americans. — Stephen Baxter

He took refuge in the concept that sometimes slowest is the fastest in the end. — Stephen Baxter

This is what I have learned, Malenfant. This is how it is, how it was, how it came to be. — Stephen Baxter

By now there were whole new Industrial Revolutions going on in the Low Earths; the British seemed to have the building of steam engines and railways in their genes. — Stephen Baxter

In the heart of a hundred billion worlds - Across a trillion dying realities in a lethal multiverse - In the chthonic silence - There was satisfaction. The network of mind continued to push out in space, from the older stars, the burned-out worlds, to the young, out across the Galaxy. Pushed deep in time too, twisting the fate of countless trillions of lives. — Stephen Baxter

... It was dark. There were no dead stars, no rogue planets. Matter itself had long evaporated, burned up by proton decay, leaving nothing but a thin smoke of neutrinos drifting out at lightspeed. But even now there was something rather than nothing. The creatures of this age drifted like clouds, immense, slow, coded in immense wispy atoms. Free energy was dwindling to zero, time stretching to infinity. It took these cloud-beings longer to complete a single thought than it once took species to rise and fall on Earth ... — Stephen Baxter