Hard Science Fiction Quotes

If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want. ~ Frederik Pohl

We do a hard fantasy as well as hard science fiction, and I think I probably single-handedly recreated military science fiction. It was dead before I started working in it. ~ Jerry Pournelle

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

It could sometimes be alive and dead at the same time in its bounded but expanding domain. It experienced both conditions and simply didn't like dead. Death was a complex issue for it. ~ John Macgregor

Her pulse raced, pounding in her ears above the howling wind. A wave of dizziness crashed over her with the rapid flood of adrenaline. She gasped in a breath. "Don't let go. ~ G.S. Jennsen

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. ~ Kameron Hurley

I grew up as an artist. Science fiction allows for design and creatures and guns and all the stuff that I like as well. So I think most of the films I make, I'm sure, will be in that category. But I can also see myself making a film like 'Black Hawk Down,' and I could also totally do horror. ~ Neill Blomkamp

The air was hot and humid. Sultry. Her body seemed to have caught some of the intensity of the storm. She felt a little wild and out of sorts. Edgy. On the verge of something big. ~ Christine Feehan

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

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

My scientific qualifications are relatively scant. I like science. I try really hard to educate myself about it, but in the end, if something has to go 'boom,' and it would probably only go 'fwoosh,' I am relatively unconcerned about that, which is a sin, but not, I think, a grave one. ~ Nick Harkaway

[...]her mouth curved into that smile that always teased every one of his senses. Amusement. She could feel it and give him that sense of playfulness and joy that she seemed to have in abundance. ~ Christine Feehan

What's a Laster? A dead man. ~ L.E. Sterling

Okay, I'll come back again on Thursday. ~ Philip K. Dick

You are ruled by change whether you like it or not, and io9's future path lies with joining a larger site that covers technology as well as science and science fiction. ~ Annalee Newitz

In a thousand years, Fred, no one will even know or care we existed. ~ David Marusek

As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored. ~ Paul Di Filippo

It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but you really don't? Now she was me - the familiar stranger.

She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair - long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma's had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth - more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I'd always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn't that my skin was suddenly so white ... maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.

I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness ... as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger ... more barbaric.

From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment - just an instant - I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother's people rejoiced. ~ P.C. Cast

In some sense, we're all cavemen - we can't imagine anything more frightening than a ghost or a vampire. But the violation of the principle of causality - that's actually much scarier than a whole herd of ghosts ... or Rubinstein's monsters ... or is that Wallenstein?"
"Frankenstein. ~ Arkady Strugatsky

My blood relatives are dead," Chen stated. "The Prominence Royal Army killed them. I'm the only one left. My given name is Qiao. I tell people my name is Chen, my surname, to honor the ones I lost. ~ J.K. Bailey

Star Trek wouldn't die. There were a whole lot of young people who were touched by the thought process of science fiction. If you watched a cop show, there wasn't anything that was going to stimulate your mind. ~ Gary Lockwood

Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no
change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is
theirs. ~ Isaac Asimov

The clichés are, of course, disguised; essentially, they are the same throughout all cheap reading matter, whether it spans the universe or the living room. They are like those 'assorted' cookies that differ from one another only in shape and shade. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Techno-shamanism is a sub-genre of science fiction that is not recognized. Ernest Hogan's "Smoking Mirror Blues" is a seminal work in techno-shamanism. ~ Frank S. Lechuga

I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist. ~ Michio Kaku

Varzo shrugged. "My people have given them good reason to be biased. The last time you were open and trusting . . . we invaded," she said unhappily.

"Yeah," muttered the boy just as unhappily. "But while there is good reason for caution, there is never a good reason for hatred, hmm?" He glanced at Varzo and lifted his brows meaningfully. ~ Ash Gray

We all have demons but the only way to beat them is if you drag them into the light. Walk with your ghosts but don't let them own you. Always remember you did the best you could at that time, no second guessing about it because you can't. It happened that way and you can't change it so learn to live with it as best you can. And then leave it alone. ~ J.J. Snow

His body recognized her. Knew her. Needed her. Every cell. He'd never been so acutely focused on another human being. ~ Christine Feehan

I mind-melded the details trapped inside my head since it felt easier than talking, which surprised me." -- Jennifer Mills from Soul Reader by: Dianne Bright ~ Dianne Bright

Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things, there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them, too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool's joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn't over. Still there are seeds to be gathered and room in the bag of stars. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Technos and clerics have much in common. Both take a world that can't be fully understood and try to explain its fundamental properties.
Clerics postulate beliefs that can never be proven; they demand you accept these postulates as your Faith, which will guide your actions and thoughts. It's a top down way of thinking; start with the big picture and derive rules for living. Fundamental knowledge is static. Even the derived rules rarely change.
Technos work from the bottom up. They build a baseline of observations and formulate theories to explain these phenomena. Nothing is sacred; with new observations, theories are discarded or modified to fit the facts.
Technos and clerics; how could they not be in conflict?
Dan Ronco's Diary, 2016
~ Dan Ronco

I thought carefully as I watched Eyuran treat Uncle Orewen's wounds. There is no one in their right mind who would assault a Danna, simply because the enemy of an individual becomes the enemy of the whole kennar. Kennar are usually related to each other, which would probably make the unlucky person the enemy of the entire Tue Dannan.

And Danna settle things the old way. ~ Jeno Marz

But Time Lords always travel in the T – in their Spectrels, don't they?"
"Only if absolutely necessary."
"You what?"
"It's another myth put about by those scoundrels. Dramatic effect and all that. It's all his fault."
"What do you mean?"
"Who's fault."
"No, I asked you first."
"No, you clot. It's Who's fault – Dr bloody Who. That's who!"
"Why?"
"No, not Why. I said it's Who's fault."
"Whose fault?"
"Yes. Who."
"What?"
"No! Listen, damn you. Don't bring Why or What into it. It's nothing to do with them. It's Who's fault."
"That's what I'm trying to establish, Doctor. Whose fault is it?"
"Yes. It's Who's fault; now, can we just bloody get on with it and stop arguing the toss and bringing the others into it? ~ Mark Speed

I think that science fiction has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Dirck's mind hadn't stopped racing since the arrest. Why were the only dreams that came true nightmares? ~ Marcha A. Fox

She loved him the way one loves an old bridge or a wool sweater or the sound of a growing tulip. ~ Joseph Fink

There was rock-hard, there was hard-as-steel, and then there was the solidity of Rafe's current erection - which so thoroughly surpassed all his previous experience, he suspected it might be of interest to science. ~ Tessa Dare

The science fiction writer cuts out her heart. It is a thousand hearts. It is all the hearts she will ever have. It is her only child's dead heart. It is the heart of herself when she is old and nothing she ever wrote can be revised again. It is a heart that says with its wet beating mouth: Time is the same thing as light. Both arrive long after they began, bearing sad messages. How lovely you are. I love you.
The science fiction writer steals her heart from herself to bring it into the light. She escapes her old heart through a smoke hole and becomes a self-referencing system of imperfect, but elegant, memory. She sews up her heart into her own leg and gives birth to it twenty years later on the long highway to Ohio. The heat of herself dividing echoes forward and back, and she accretes, bursts, and begins again the long process of her own super-compression until her heart is an egg containing everything. She eats of her heart and knows she is naked. She throws her heart into the abyss and it falls a long way, winking like a red star. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

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

He places a hand on either side of the bar, locking me in. 'And why won't you admit it?' he asks.
I'm so startled by his new, gentler tone that I hazard a glance. My breath catches in my throat. Jared's eyes have changed to that sumptuous green, huge and mesmerizing, the pupils dilating like a cat's. I can't see to look away as he inches forward, until he's standing all but a hair's breadth away from me. ~ L.E. Sterling

We're not freaks, Tally. We're normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we're not hyped-up Barbie dolls. ~ Scott Westerfeld

You're a smart one. You know as good as me and as Flick that there is no Promised Land. Matilda's an orphan, a daughter of dead gods. But Ancestors is real and their spirits are at work. Baby sun giving out is how they making a fuss. ~ Rivers Solomon

... there are certain questions that must never be asked. Of anyone. Even oneself. ~ Jenny Lynne

Jadan's kiss on my forehead wasn't that big of a deal, something that a boy would have done at a junior high dance or how a friend would say goodbye before a long trip. But it felt like more. It seemed like he wanted more." ---Jennifer Mills ~ Dianne Bright

I've called science fiction 'reality ahead of schedule' ~ Syd Mead

Fiction is lies; we're writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it. ~ George R R Martin

I'm not really a science-fiction fan, I quite like the idea of getting away from the science-fiction side of it, for two episodes. It was lovely, it was a super story and great fun. ~ Sarah Sutton

The kid is scary. ~ Orson Scott Card

Clara Oswald: This is just a dream, but very clever people can hear dreams. So please, just listen. I know you're afraid, but being afraid is all right, because didn't anybody ever tell you fear is a superpower? Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger.
And one day, you'll come back to this barn and on that day you're going to be very afraid indeed. But that's ok because if you're very wise and very strong, fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind.
It doesn't matter if there's nothing under the bed or in the dark, so long as you know it's ok to be afraid of it. You're always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a companion, a constant companion, always there. But that's ok, because fear can bring us together.
Fear can bring you home.
I'm going to leave you with something just so you always remember: Fear makes companions of us all. -Listen, Doctor Who, episode 8.4 ~ Steven Moffat

I have no idea what my draw is for science fiction. I hope they come to me because they like complicated women. But I've never played the Bionic Woman. In 'Sarah Connor' and 'Lost,' I am not the orchestrator of what happens. I've played quite peripheral people. ~ Sonya Walger

I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective. ~ Alan Alda