Fiction Science Quotes & Sayings

Soylent Brown? It ain't people, but it comes from them. — Hal Duncan

This looks interesting, I say, but what I'm really thinking is, Wow, Aimee, science fiction? Really, could you try any harder to brand yourself with the mark of the nerd herd? What's next, anime? — Tim Tharp

For some the label sci-fi is just a shortand for science fiction, an alternative to sf gesturing at ... you know, that stuff we like. — Hal Duncan

'Farscape' is not what you call hard science fiction. — Ben Browder

I'm not so interested any more in how a great deal of science fiction goes. It goes into things like Star Wars and Star Trek which all go excellent in their own way. — Robert Sheckley

I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated by the Machine. Then I said to myself, "Man is the measure", and I went, and after many visits I found an opening. — E. M. Forster

Just because your electronics are better than ours, you aren't necessarily superior in any way. Look, imagine that you humans are a man in LA with a brand-new Trujillo and we are a nuhp in New York with a beat-up old Ford. The two fellows start driving toward St. Louis. Now, the guy in the Trujillo is doing 120 on the interstates, and the guy in the Ford is putting along at 55; but the human in the Trujillo stops in Vegas and puts all of his gas money down the hole of a blackjack table, and the determined little nuhp cruises along for days until at last he reaches his goal. It's all a matter of superior intellect and the will to succeed.
Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have. — George Alec Effinger

The science fiction author, H.G. Wells was an avid supporter of eugenics and a believer in a hierarchy of the races. — A.E. Samaan

I designed Ender's Game to be as clear and accessible as any story of mine could possibly be. My goal was that the reader wouldn't
have to be trained in literature or even in science fiction to receive the tale in its simplest, purest form.
If everybody came to agree that stories should be told this clearly, the professors of literature would be out of a job, and the writers of obscure, encoded fiction would be, not honored, but pitied for their impenetrability. — Orson Scott Card

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Don't you see, Lynn? We have to help ... or else we won't have learned a thing. — A.C. Crispin

But eggshells were made to be broken, and slamming into a 100-story skyscraper at the speed of light would likely do the deed. — Maureen A. Miller

I wrote the very first stories in science fiction which dealt with homosexuality, The World Well Lost and Affair With a Green Monkey. — Theodore Sturgeon

They say it's always darkest before the dawn and it was pitch black by the time I arrived at the Marriott. However I still had a few bullets left for my deadbeat uncle that tried to stab me in the back. — Angel Ramon Medina

This is for everyone who has ever looked at the stars, or gazed from atop a hill, or across the sea and wondered ... — Tim Perkins

I define science fiction as fiction in which things happen that are not possible today - that depend, for instance, on advanced space travel, time travel, the discovery of green monsters on other planets or galaxies, or that contain various technologies we have not yet developed. — Margaret Atwood

Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years. — Junot Diaz

Physics is often stranger than science fiction, and I think science fiction takes its cues from physics: higher dimensions, wormholes, the warping of space and time, stuff like that. — Michio Kaku

Blood drummed in her ears and adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to move. To act. Her hands trembled against his chest.

Time vanished out from beneath her feet, one accelerating second at a time. — G.S. Jennsen

Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it. — Tom Shippey

Crap this apology stuff is hard! — J.J. Snow

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

What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it's not just me. (15) — Mary Doria Russell

Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract. So automatically you're getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It's one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride. They don't contend it. They accept it, that they're going to go places that are a bit more of the imagination, a bit more out there, and that's more and more where I like to dance. — Nicolas Cage

I never, as a reader, have been particularly interested in dystopian literature or science fiction or, in fact, fantasy. — Lois Lowry

Science Fiction: Any scientific acclaim that omits God. — Johnny Hart

The '70s was a decade that was crammed with prominent women science fiction writers, and a lot of women made their debut in that decade or really came to prominence. — Ann Leckie

The computer has evolved into a partner, a tool, and an environment
not just in science fiction, but in the public consciousness as well. Computers are no longer malevolent iron brains that manufacture tyrannical and oppressive answers; they are not a way to think, they are a place from which to think. The computer is an environment in which answers can be sought, created, manipulated and developed. — David Gerrold

LARRY NIVEN is best known as a science-fiction writer. — Neil Gaiman

The history of science fiction started in the caves 20,000 years ago. The ideas on the walls of the cave were problems to be solved. It's problem solving. Primitive scientific knowledge, primitive dreams, primitive blueprinting: to solve problems. — Ray Bradbury

In older science fiction stories, they had to rely on storytelling as opposed to spectacle. The old run of the 'Twilight Zone,' the star was the writing and the storytelling, and the characters and the twists and the cleverness in the setup and payoff and execution. — Josh Trank

An eerie, chilling voice interrupted him to reverberate through the house.

"You believe you are safe, but you will never be safe from me. My reach is limitless, my capabilities legion. Sleep fitfully and avoid the shadows, for know that I am coming for you. When I arrive, you will pay for what you did. — G.S. Jennsen

Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me - and there are thousands like me - you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy. — Virginia Woolf

But I think, and hope, that the novels can be understood and enjoyed as science fiction, on their own terms. — Dan Simmons

He holds her with the strength of a million-man army, but with all the tenderness of her heart lying naked in the palms of his hands. — Laura Kreitzer

Once, I believed that space could
have no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God's
handwork. Now I have seen that handwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. — Arthur C. Clarke

One of the strangest features of string theory is that it requires more than the three spatial dimensions that we see directly in the world around us. That sounds like science fiction, but it is an indisputable outcome of the mathematics of string theory. — Brian Greene

Queers can't destroy science fiction. No one can. No one can destroy the future. But we can, through malice or complacency or inattention, limit the future. — Sigrid Ellis

The Jetsons had them in the 1960s. They were the defining element of 'Knight Rider' in the 1980s: cars that drive themselves. Self-driving cars appear in countless science fiction movies. By Hollywood standards, they are so normal we don't even notice them. But in real life, they still don't exist. What if you could buy one today? — Sebastian Thrun

. . . there was no possible way to deny that this girl probably felt emotions much deeper than most other people. If anyone was human, she was. — J. Kowallis

Me, I have a science fiction writer's conviction that the damn robot is supposed to speak
human, not the other way around. — Spider Robinson

Life seemed ideal to him right then, and he was happy for the first time in a long time, and it felt like the sun was shining from his heart. - from the novel Brainjob by David Sloma. — David Sloma

When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It's like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then? — Bill Nye

I wondered for a second why I cared so much, but I knew I did. I wanted to be more like the Upper-Cs. Not snobby or mean, but just a bit more. It was hard to explain, I just liked the thought of being dolled up and having a few nice things. — Y.A. Marks

Why not take a science fiction comic and put the characters in a small town to gain their particular perspective? A lot of that comes from me growing up in a small town on a farm, so that's what I know and what I'm comfortable with. My drawing style is also very sparse and minimalist, so a rural setting complements that. — Jeff Lemire

Let your life be a song. Let music be the background of whatever human things you will do for this blazing, spinning planet, and never let go of the good, never let go of the kindness. — Logan Keys

There's a science fiction project we really want to make, but it's very expensive. Hopefully it will happen. — Lana Wachowski

You will see what you missed if you turn around. — Han Soo Lee

In science fiction, telepaths often communicate across language barriers, since thoughts are considered to be universal. However, this might not be true. Emotions and feelings may well be nonverbal and universal, so that one could telepathically send them to anyone, but rational thinking is so closely tied to language that it is very unlikely that complex thoughts could be sent across language barriers. Words will still be sent telepathically in their original language. — Michio Kaku

(D)reams are like that: they go in and out of memories and scenes, but they're never real. They're never real, and I hate them because they aren't. — Beth Revis

The prophecy has come true! You put the sea salt in the soup...You are the one! — PanOrpheus

Leela: Why are we listening to them? It is a waste of time.
The Doctor; It is difficult to know what will be a waste of time until after the time has been wasted, by which time it is too late. So predicting what will be a waste of time is something of a waste of time. Unless it gives you pleasure of course when it probably doesn't count as a waste of time.
Leela (yawning): I am sorry I did not hear what you said, Doctor.
The Doctor (smiling): That was a waste of time then. — Chris Boucher

It's a dreadfully long monster of a book, and I certainly won't have time to read it, but I'm giving it a thorough skimming. The authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. And the time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell, I'm sure, and the authors - whom I've never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposing a real conspiracy. You can be sure I won't waste time reading such rubbish. — Robert Shea

Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact. — Isaac Asimov

Man leave the past in the past. That's where it belongs. The trouble with addicts is that they carry bad memories around with them - like old luggage. And in that luggage that's where they carry their blueprint for living. You got to decide what's worth keeping, and then set the rest of it on the curb for the garbage.
-Joseph — Valjeanne Jeffers

Everyone has got their own ideas and they push them and say to hell with everyone else. That's the history of the human race. It got us on top, only now it is pushing us off. The thing is that people will put up with any kind of discomfort, and dying babies, and old age at thirty as long as it has always been that way. Try to get them to change and they fight you, even while they're dying, saying it was good enough for grandpa so it's good enough for me. Bango, dead. — Harry Harrison

It was the storm that would forever change the course of human destiny. — Jeff W. Horton

When I was a young writer if you went to a party and told somebody you were a science-fiction writer you would be insulted. They would call you Flash Gordon all evening, or Buck Rogers. — Ray Bradbury

When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now
where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists. — Doris Lessing

Science Non Fiction/ Fantasy = Future — Deyth Banger

In science fiction, you can also test out your own realities. — Theodore Sturgeon

I would like to do a science fiction film some day. Star Wars seems really to have destroyed the genre, which at one time offered great musical opportunities. — Carter Burwell

I was his heartbeat. I was his fucking universe.
Now I was, but soon I wouldn't be.
I would miss that, miss being important.
I would miss having someone. — Lisa Henry

Even when I'm writing about shape shifters and magical lands, I'm looking into my own heart. — Kay Kenyon

I tend more towards what some people call literary science fiction, but what I mean by that is that it is full of interesting language, experimentation, and ideas. — Edward Einhorn

It really wasn't my thing. It still isn't my thing, the whole science-fiction action thing. I prefer simpler, character-based movies. — Natalie Portman

Science fiction is about worlds you don't know and worlds you can create, like in 'Avatar'. — Paul Verhoeven

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon. — Victor Hugo

Mistakes? That's why they put erasers on pencils. — Rick Barnett

May it be written. May it be done. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

Her heavy breathing echoed off the thick walls, her body frozen in shock, but when Marik reappeared in the mouth of the cave, she reached for the sword. He was still in a state of bloodlust and was, what she could only describe as, stalking her. — Kiersten Fay

Past memories strobed before him, flashes of joy blackened by the present. Reality teased, then beckoned, home likewise. Confusion dimmed, the answer clear. This could end. Would end. In one of two ways.
Still he refused, not ready for either. — Marcha A. Fox

Magic is magic as long as humans can explain it logically! — Asse Sauga

I like certain subgenres within science fiction and fantasy, and one of those is urban fantasy, and another is steampunk. — Gail Carriger

The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen. — Kate Wilhelm

I would ask, 'Have you read '1984'? Have you read 'Brave New World'? If so, I'm sorry, but you read science fiction.' — Carrie Vaughn

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living. — David Morrell

Now, Venus is an extremely hostile environment, and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However, as I began to research it more thoroughly, I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers. — Sarah Zettel

Verily, a man without fear is either dead or happy to die. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

Tactile receptors weren't needed to experience pain. Tone of voice transported those spores just as easily. — Clyde DeSouza

This girl holds my heart in her hand and she's squishing it to nothing with her confession. — Siobhan Davis

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it. — Frank Herbert

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. — John Hopkins

So when he touched me, it was deeper and slower than the wildfire, like the flow of molten rock far beneath the surface of the earth. Too deep to feel the heat of it, but it moved inexorably, changing the very foundations of the world with its advance. — Stephenie Meyer

In every big-budget science fiction movie there's the moment when a spaceship as large as New York suddenly goes to light speed. A twanging noise like a wooden ruler being plucked over the edge of a desk, a dazzling refraction of light, and suddenly the stars have all been stretched out thin and it's gone. This was exactly like that, except that instead of a gleaming twelve-mile-long spaceship, it was an off-white twenty-year-old motor scooter. And you didn't have the special rainbow effects. And it probably wasn't going at more than two hundred miles an hour. And instead of a pulsing whine sliding up the octaves, it just went putputputputput ...
VROOOOSH.
But it was exactly like that anyway. — Neil Gaiman

Why do humans never do as they're told? Someone should replace you all with robots. No, on second though, they shouldn't, bad idea. — Jonathan Morris

Knowing all the languages in the world could help you to really understand all the jokes you can hear ... from my future Kids' Funny Business. — Ivan Stoikov

She could and had faced an armed laser in the hands of a mad mutant
mercenary with less fear than she faced such unswerving emotion ... — J.D. Robb

We insist that this stuff we call science fiction is not SCI-FI. For some in the ghetto of Genre this is axiomatic, a secret truth known only to the genre kids, that there is proper science fiction and then there's that SCI-FI shit. — Hal Duncan

Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants. — Stephen King

Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. — Arthur C. Clarke

I love really exploring ... you know, a cop drama for example is a great way to explore class in this country and explore, you know, really, identity in the country and who we are in a way that is extremely exciting, but it's also real, you know, it's also real people and real drama. The same with the military. I mean, a good science fiction story is also great. — Ethan Hawke

Years of science fiction have produced a mindset that it is human destiny to expand from Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, to the stars. — Barney Oliver

There, amongst the angry water was the glow of green eyes, hundreds of them encompassed the entire area ... We were completely and totally surrounded. They all hung just below the water waiting for a sign to attack. There was no hope. We would all perish ... — Meredith T. Taylor

If you act for self-gain then no good can come of it. If you act selflessly, then you act well for all and you must not be afraid. — Rand Miller

Time is a thief. A killer. Time is killing him. — Laura Kreitzer

The woman's gaze sent chills racing down his spine. The diabolical, aberrantly predatory arch of her lips curdled his blood. Seriously, his blood must be curdling back at the lab right now.

"Nice illusion. I'm definitely feeling the evil vibe here."

She stood and rounded the desk with perfect grace. "There is no illusion. Explain yourself quickly now, before I grow bored by your presence and dispense with it. — G.S. Jennsen

Yet even the most hackneyed, shopworn science fiction or fantasy tale will feel startling and fresh to a naive reader who doesn't know the milieu is just like the one used in a thousand other stories. — Orson Scott Card

Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; that's the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have any control over those patterns, why not make the most elegant ones, the most enjoyable and good ones, in our own terms? Yes, we're hedonists, Mr. Bora Horza Gobuchul. We seek pleasure and have fashioned ourselves so that we can take more of it; admitted. We are what we are. But what about you? What does that make you? — Iain Banks

The constrained body knows and values the freedom of the mind. — Ursula K. Le Guin