Dystopian Novel Science Fiction Quotes

Oh, oh. My heart starts that quivering, fluttering thing it does whenever he hints at his desire for me. Lacing his fingers through mine, he moves to close the gap between us. I know he's only holding my hand, but it's the manner in which his fingers curl around mine, and the way his eyes bore into me that makes it seem much more intimate. ~ Siobhan Davis

What can he tell them? He, who knows nothing. Ibn al Mohammed has not planned atrocities nor committed them. He has never been in the presence of terrorists. Yet Satan's agents suspect him. He is dark-complected. His hair and beard are black. His name is Muslim. Body tall and slender, hands large, their fingers long and tapered. Dark eyes sunken in a narrow face. Irises like obsidian. He prays on hands and knees, forehead touching the floor. Thoughtlessly aligned, his cage obliges him to face a white plastic wall to bow toward Mecca. No matter; Ibn al Mohammed requires no sight of ocean or sky to know his place in the universe. He knows himself as one chosen, beloved of God. A man whose devotion will allow him to be saved.

Standing at the bars, he stares at the plastic wall. Modesty panel, they call it. The detainee wills nothing, attempts nothing, merely stares at blankness as his mind opens toward such signs as might appear. Something, nothing. However little, however great, whatever God vouchsafes is sufficient. The least sign is enough. A crease in the plastic. A shadow cast against its insensate skin, then fleeing, gone. A raindrop: trickling through the roof, one small drop might touch the wall, leave a transparent streak, a tear without sorrow to confirm his understanding of what is and must be. Recognition. Acceptance. By such a sign he will know he is not forsaken. That God notices and prepares a place.

He will not serve in the harvest. He will ~ John Lauricella I 2094 I

No offense, doll, but that's not something I'm willing to share. I'd prefer to live a long and happy life if it's all the same to you."
"You can't just throw out vague allegations and then say nothing else!"
"See, that's the good thing about being a fugitive like me. I can do what the hell I like, and I'm not answerable to anyone." Stepping away from the bars, he stands with his legs stretched out wide. His stance matches his grin.
"Sure looks like that's working out well for you," I say, piercing him with a scornful look. ~ Siobhan Davis

Jenna is acting strange. Weeping, moping, even remarks tending toward belittlement Melmoth might tolerate (although he cannot think why; she is not his wife and even in human females PMS is a plague of the past) but when he caught her lying about Raquel - udderly wonderful, indeed - he knew the problem was serious.

After sex, Melmoth powers her down. He retrieves her capsule from underground storage, a little abashed to be riding up with the oblong vessel in a lobby elevator where anyone might see. Locked vertical for easy transport, the capsule on its castors and titanium carriage stands higher than Melmoth is tall. He cannot help feeling that its translucent pink upper half and tapered conical roundness make it look like an erect penis. Arriving at penthouse level, he wheels it into his apartment. Once inside his private quarters, he positions it beside the hoverbed and enters a six-character alphanumeric open-sesame to spring the lid. On an interior panel, Melmoth touches a sensor for AutoRenew. Gold wands deploy from opposite ends and set up a zero-gravity field that levitates Jenna from the topsheet. As if by magic - to Melmoth it is magic - the inert form of his personal android companion floats four feet laterally and gentles to rest in a polymer cradle contoured to her default figure.

Jenna is only a SmartBot. She does not breathe, blood does not run in her arteries and veins. She has no arteries or veins, nor a heart, nor anything in the way of ~ John Lauricella

This virus will leave us entirely newborn people. We will all be different, none of us will ever be the same again. We will have deeper roots, be made of denser soil, and our eyes will have seen things. ~ C. JoyBell C.

My experiment has demonstrated that people from the past can be artificially reincarnated. The purpose is so people from Twinmortal do not commit the same error that we did.-Amaranth ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

We are a species born from the planet. If the machines truly want to protect the Earth type planets they must learn to take care of us too.- Sun Wukong ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

I was able to bring the souls from the past back to life.-Amaranth ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

You know what it is like to wake up in the middle of a bunch of corpses with a little girl in your arms scared to death?-Enyo ~ Carolina Cody Aldaz

Zane looks pensive, and then his lips twitch. "They say most girls end up marrying a guy just like their dad."
"Oh God … That's so lame," I say, spluttering as coffee dribbles down my chin.
"I believe it's a tried and tested theory," he says, standing up and wiping my chin with the back of his hand. I jolt at his touch.
"Now it's a theory? I thought it was a saying? Next you'll be telling me it's a fact." I flop back down on the couch.
"Empirical evidence shows that sixty-eight percent of girls marry a guy who displays similar personality traits to her father ..." His voice trails off as I shake my head. "What?" he asks, his palms open and raised.
"You really need to get out more. Where'd you glean that interesting nugget? The desperate men's journal perhaps? ~ Siobhan Davis

Nothing in heaven or earth is content to be alone, and so there must always be something more. The universe is governed by a principle no more complicated than this: that a solitary body will forever attract another to itself. ~ John Pipkin

I was sitting on the couch in the living room, pouring through an old sci-fi novel I'd found in one of the ruins, and I could hear the water bubbling as he cooked. The spaghetti smelled good, but I knew he'd probably put something crazy in it like popcorn or marshmallows, so I ignored my rumbling belly. ~ Ash Gray

Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery. ~ John Pipkin

The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say 'I read a science fiction novel that says it's not a problem.' You take action. ~ Al Gore

Wrote a science fiction novel about a man who wins an argument with his wife, but it was rejected for being too farfetched. ~ Dana Gould

It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days. ~ John Pipkin

I remember my father, who had served in Vietnam, once talking to me about how real courage is when you're scared out of your mind but you do what you have to do anyway. I didn't feel very courageous at the moment. I felt like a small mouse in the mouth of a lion. ~ Anna M. Aquino

The conventional understanding of meritocracy is that it is a system for awarding or allocating scarce resources to those who most deserve them. The idea behind meritocracy is that people should achieve status or realize the promise of upward mobility based on their individual talent or individual effort. It is conceived as a repudiation of systems like aristocracy where individuals inherit their social status.

I am arguing that many of the criteria we associate with individual talent and effort do not measure the individual in isolation but rather parallel the phenomena associated with aristocracy; what we're calling individual talent is actually a function of that individual's social position or opportunities gained by virtue of family and ancestry. So, although the system we call "meritocracy" is presumed to be more democratic and egalitarian than aristocracy, it is in fact reproducing that which it was intended to dislodge.

Michael Young, a British sociologist, created the term in 1958 when he wrote a science fiction novel called The Rise of Meritocracy. The book was a satire in which he depicted a society where people in power could legitimate their status using "merit" as the justificatory terminology and in which others could be determined not simply to have been poor or left out but to be deservingly disenfranchised. ~ Lani Guinier

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

When it becomes acceptable to kill another man or woman, childhood dies." whispered Laurence. "When it becomes acceptable to kill a child…humanity dies. ~ Kipjo Kenyatta Ewers

He lied," she said. "There is no way for us to seize bitcoins. Well, there is no current way for the federal government to seize bitcoins at will; in order to do that we'd need one of the creators of the currency." She paused and watched me very closely for a reaction.

This was all still gibberish to me. This was something out of a science fiction novel, or a Stephen King movie with Tom Cruise where Tom Cruise has to run someplace from some people - because that's what Tom Cruise does, he runs while looking concerned and futuristic.

Therefore, I decided to look surprised and thoughtful.

"Yes." She nodded; she believed I was following her train of thought. I wasn't following her train because mine had derailed on thoughts of a running Tom Cruise…weird little man. ~ Penny Reid

I believe that humans are on an evolutionary path where brain usage will escalate beyond the current 10% standard, and as we evolve, so will our "ESP" abilities. Today, more and more children are born already possessing these abilities, and it's appropriate we adjust to the new world reality already happening. ~ Tessie Jayme

The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer's gasp. ~ John Pipkin

A novel in progress doesn't have a clear, forward process. It's messy, like a beloved, balky child. ~ Kay Kenyon

The couch and I were what I would describe as frenemies. I loved to hate it. It was too small for my frame. I had tried to tell my wife that fact when we bought it off of Craigslist, but she assured me that it went perfectly with our room decor and it was a good deal. ~ Anna M. Aquino

Rooms, corridors, bookcases, shelves, filing cards, and computerized catalogues assume that the subjects on which our thoughts dwell are actual entities, and through this assumption a certain book may be lent a particular tone and value. Filed under Fiction, Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a humorous novel of adventure; under Sociology, a satirical study of England in the eighteenth century; under Children's Literature, an entertaining fable about dwarfs and giants and talking horses; under Fantasy, a precursor of science fiction; under Travel, an imaginary voyage; under Classics, a part of the Western literary canon. Categories are exclusive; reading is not--or should not be. Whatever classifications have been chosen, every library tyrannizes the act of reading, and forces the reader--the curious reader, the alert reader--to rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned. ~ Alberto Manguel

Each new scientific fact gives rise to new uncertainties, and every pattern of starlight holds both a record and a prophecy. ~ John Pipkin

She stared, wide eyed as glass-walled elevators shot up fifty-two floors like pods in a launch tube. Everything - from the glaringly bright carpet swirling with psychedelic lines; to the hotel's open ceiling ringed by storey after storey of balconies, the distant roof so high it made her head spin; to the people decked out in cosplay - was torn from a science fiction novel. It seemed Liv had spent the last eighteen years in search of her people, and in one sudden explosion of fate, they'd all been brought together in this place in time. Her eyes filled with tears as a sudden awareness filled her.
They were all nerds. ~ Danika Stone

The quiet brings to mind the multitude of men and women living out their days in solitude - each convinced that their fears and wants are unique to themselves - and she longs to press herself into their fold and be counted among those whose lives are meshed with the turning of the world. ~ John Pipkin

As the eclipse progresses, a confusion of chattering birds sweeps low in search of dusk and their shadows skip over the water's surface and it makes perfect sense that these small creatures should be so moved by events beyond their reckoning. ~ John Pipkin

A novel is a bridge from one heart to another. - Anon ~ Susan McKenzie

They weren't people that liked change. They were the kind of people that would have tied change to a chair with dental floss if they could in order to avoid it. They were the type of people who desired to live in their virtual bubbles and grew to resent anyone that challenged that world. ~ Anna M. Aquino

So we will cover every possibility. We will take turns at the telescope. I will keep watch in the day, and at night you will take my place, and together we will see to it that no part of the sky goes unobserved. ~ John Pipkin

Fantasy novels reveal "emergency escape routes" from reality. Romance novels dish out a banquet of Eye Candy. Otherworldly passion erupts when the two collide in an epic novel of unforgettable characters and dire circumstances. ~ Sarah J. Pepper

Jigsaw Lady is the working title of a science fiction novel I've had in my head for darn near 15 years. I think I'll start work on it next year (in all my spare time) but I'd like to get it finished some day. ~ Raymond E. Feist

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

My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. ~ Alan Moore

Hopis have lived in America longer than anyone. We wanted to explore the concept of Earthly visitation through the eyes of people who have also witnessed the rapid evolution of modern culture. For us, their beliefs ring true on so many levels. Hopi prophecy speaks to the destiny of man...in a universe where we are not alone. ~ T.J. Wolf

It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere. ~ John Pipkin

We're all going to wake up any day now, and this will all be a dream. Until then, why don't we enjoy the chance to live in a science fiction novel? ~ Mira Grant

I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write. ~ James Rollins

He tracks the rise and fall of the glittering darkness thronged with specks and tendrils of luminous secrets. Falling stars crackle in the cold air and prickle his skin. They flash in the corner of his vision where the eye's discernment of light and shadow is most acute. ~ John Pipkin

Surprised huh, thought you had me back in prison didn't you? To answer your question what keeps me alive is my drive, my drive to kill you! I have nothing, but hate for you and your family. It will be my pleasure taking you out. I don't care about power, plutonium or even being rich. None of that matters to me. I only care about taking you out. Even if I die I want to be the one who is called the killer of Angel Medina! There's no where for you to go. Now we will truly see who is better! Come on put up you hands and prepare for your final battle of your life! - Orlando from Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War ~ Angel Ramon Medina

I did some research on cryonics and cryogenics, but I kept it to a minimum because I didn't want the science part of the novel to overshadow the fiction. Being medically accurate wasn't my main goal. ~ John Corey Whaley

The finest SF comes to grips with life's mysteries, with our resentments against our own natures and our limited societies. It does so by asking basic questions in the artful, liberating way that is unique to this form of writing. Echoes of it are found in other forms of fiction - in the novel of ideas, in the historical novel, in the writings of the great philosophers and scientists; but the best SF does this all more searchingly, by taking what is in most people only a moment of wonder and rebellion against the arbitrariness of existence and making of it an art enriched by knowledge and possibility, expressing our deepest human longing to penetrate into the dark heart of the unknown. ~ George Zebrowski

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book. ~ Robert Reed

'Floating Worlds,' published in 1975 and the lone science fiction novel by acclaimed historical novelist Cecelia Holland, was unique in being completely devoid of the usual pulp influences present in much space opera up to that time. ~ Pamela Sargent

In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space ... But you laid the foundation for space tourism. ~ Nursultan Nazarbayev

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.
The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction.
Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every novel read by choice is read because it gives true pleasure.
Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies.
Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral.
Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.

(Hypothesis on Literature vs. Genre) ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The only wand you'll ever need is a better-feeling thought. ~ C.G. Rousing

Spirits didn't notice death. By the rule of impermanence, what was meant to break simply broke, and there was only the next breaking and the next. ~ E.J. Koh

Sketches of mad skies spilling stars caught in spiraling gyres, diagrams for constructing sextants tall as a man and armillary spheres to mimic the motion of the cosmos. He decides that he must have all of it, that he will cram the little observatory with maps and charts, clocks and compasses, and instruments for bringing the sky nearer. ~ John Pipkin

First Nations and science fiction don't usually go together. In fact, they could be considered rather unusual topics to mention in the same sentence, much like fish and bicycles.... To me, sci-fi was a world of possibilities. As a fan of writing, why shouldn't my fascination extend to such unconventional works? It was still writing, still literature in all its glory, but here they used different tools to explore the human condition, be they aliens, advanced technology, or other such novel approaches.... I wanted to take traditional (a buzzword in the Native community) science-fiction characteristics and filter them through an Aboriginal consciousness. ~ Drew Hayden Taylor