Science Fiction And Fantasy Quotes

The difference between science fiction and fantasy ... is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees. ~ Orson Scott Card

People often seem surprised that I choose to write science fiction and fantasy - I think they expect a history professor to write historical fiction, or literary fiction, associating academia with the kinds of novels that academic lit critics prefer. But I feel that speculative fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is a lot more like the pre-modern literature I spend most of my time studying than most modern literature is. Ursula Le Guin has described speculative fiction authors as "realists of a larger reality" because we imagine other ways of being, alternatives to how people live now, different worlds, and raise questions about hope and change and possibilities that different worlds contain.

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Writing for a more distant audience, authors tended to be speculative, using exotic perspectives, fantastic creatures, imaginary lands, allegories, prophecies, stories within stories, techniques which, like science fiction and fantasy, use alternatives rather than one reality in order to ask questions, not about the way things are, but about plural ways things have been and could be. Such works have an empathy across time, expecting and welcoming an audience as alien as the other worlds that they describe. When I read Voltaire responding to Francis Bacon, responding to Petrarch, responding to Boethius, responding to Seneca, responding to Plutarch, I want to respond to them too, to pass it on. So it makes sense to me to answer in the genre people ha ~ Ada Palmer

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

It's funny because when I was growing up, I was really into science fiction and fantasy as a kid. And, when I first became a screenwriter, I ended up really just doing historical drama and non-fiction based stuff, like Band of Brothers and stuff that didn't get made, but was also non-fiction. ~ John Orloff

Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off. ~ Ray Bradbury

Part of the particular interest and beauty of science fiction and fantasy: writer and reader collaborate in world-making. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

At some point, every science fiction and fantasy story must challenge the reader's experience and learning. That's much of the reason why the genre is so open to experimentation and innovation that other genres reject
strangeness is our bread and butter. Spread it thick or slice it thin, it's still our staff of life. ~ Orson Scott Card

Why would I what?" Will asked, wanting another bite of his burger. "Why would you risk your job teaching some stupid fantasy book?" "Because alternative universe literature promotes critical thinking, imagination, empathy, and creative problem solving. Children who are fluent in fiction are more able to interpret nonfiction and are better at understanding things like basic cause and effect, sociology, politics, and the impact of historical events on current events. Many of our technological advances were imagined by science fiction writers before the tech became available to create them, and many of today's inventors were inspired by science fiction and fantasy to make a world more like the world in the story. Many of today's political conundrums were anticipated by science fiction writers like Orwell, Huxley, and Heinlein, and sci-fi and fantasy tackle ethical problems in a way that allows people to analyze the problem with some emotional remove, which is important because the high emotions are often what lead to violence. Works like Harry Potter tackle the idea of abuse of power and - " Will stopped himself and swallowed. Everybody at the table, including Kenny, was staring at him in openmouthed surprise. "Anyway," he said before taking a monster bite of his cooling hamburger on a sudden attack of nerves, "iss goomfer umf." "It's good for us," Kenny translated, sounding a little stunned ~ Amy Lane

Few female characters get to be "the Chosen One" in science fiction and fantasy. Leia is as much the child of Darth Vader as Luke is, but only Luke gets to use the force, be recruited by his dad and ultimately save the day. We don't get impossibly clever female sleuths or the sexy spies with the awesome gadgets. And on the rare occasions that we do get those characters, they're denigrated as unrealistic Mary Sues. ~ Rhiannon Thomas

When people ask me to define science fiction and fantasy I say they are the literatures that explore the fact that we are toolmakers and users, and are always changing our environment. ~ Nalo Hopkinson

Science fiction and fantasy feels like it's been ascending in the zeitgeist. ~ John Joseph Adams

My advice is to write about what you are interested in. If you read science fiction and fantasy, then write in that genre. If you read romance novels, then try writing one. ~ Michael Scott

The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

I've read science fiction and fantasy all my life – though when you're a child, they just call that "books." The first book I ever read on my own was The Neverending Story. I studied classics at university, and in ancient literature, monsters, witches, magic, curses, and impossible machines aren't genre, they're just Tuesday afternoon. I had no idea that I was writing fantasy at first, because I was so saturated in Greek literature that it never occurred to me that my talking animals and sentient mazes were anything but realism. Our instinct toward folklore and magical stories, parables and imagining the future, are as much a part of the human experiences as divorce, grief, falling in love, politics, or raising children. I've always read fantastic literature, because it's always seemed truest to me. It makes the metaphorical literal and is all the more powerful for that immediacy and directness. I love genre fiction for the infinite expanse of stories it can tell – and it's been my constant companion since I was a very small child. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

Science fiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often you only wish that it could. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek. ~ China Mieville

Science fiction and fantasy are very closely related genres, and a lot of people say that the genres are so close that there's actually no meaningful distinction to be made between the two. But I think that there does exist an useful distinction to be made between magic and science. One way to look at it is in terms of whether a given phenomenon can be mass-produced. ~ Ted Chiang

During my first few months of Facebooking, I discovered that my page had fostered a collective nostalgia for specific cultural icons. These started, unsurprisingly, within the realm of science fiction and fantasy. They commonly included a pointy-eared Vulcan from a certain groundbreaking 1960s television show.

Just as often, though, I found myself sharing images of a diminutive, ancient, green and disarmingly wise Jedi Master who speaks in flip-side down English. Or, if feeling more sinister, I'd post pictures of his black-cloaked, dark-sided, heavy-breathing nemesis. As an aside, I initially received from Star Trek fans considerable "push-back," or at least many raised Spock brows, when I began sharing images of Yoda and Darth Vader. To the purists, this bordered on sacrilege.. But as I like to remind fans, I was the only actor to work within both franchises, having also voiced the part of Lok Durd from the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

It was the virality of these early posts, shared by thousands of fans without any prodding from me, that got me thinking. Why do we love Spock, Yoda and Darth Vader so much? And what is it about characters like these that causes fans to click "like" and "share" so readily?

One thing was clear: Cultural icons help people define who they are today because they shaped who they were as children. We all "like" Yoda because we all loved The Empire Strikes Back, probably watched it many times, and can reci ~ George Takei

I consider science fiction and fantasy my genre. And I've noticed over the years that there doesn't tend to be a lot of lighthearted, comedic stuff. ~ Gail Carriger

I launched 'Lightspeed' magazine in 2010, and from day one, we've had a strict mission to try to have gender parity in the magazine because that was the first hurdle that science fiction and fantasy have been dealing with for a long time. ~ John Joseph Adams

You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell. ~ Orson Scott Card

I have a collection of mid-century, small-press science fiction and fantasy hardcovers that is my most focused and dedicated collection. Everything else I tend more to acquire or amass than collect. I have vinyl records I listen to all the time when I work. But I don't collect records. I just buy records where the price seems right and it's music I actually listen to. ~ Michael Chabon

I read mostly science-fiction and fantasy when I was a teenager, and I was always drawn to stories where the characters had telepathic powers. ~ Ruth Glick

I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds. ~ David S.Goyer

First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down. RAY BRADBURY Prolific American author of science fiction and fantasy ~ Jack Canfield

In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal. ~ Hari Kunzru

I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

It's not enough to have good ideas, you need to master their implementation.

Rossi, Luca (2014-06-22). Galactic Energies: Science fiction and fantasy short stories (p. 20). . Kindle Edition. ~ Luca Rossi

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?' ~ Octavia E. Butler

I grew up a really nerdy kid. I read science fiction and fantasy voraciously, for the first 16 years of my life. I read a lot of classic Cold War science fiction, which is much of the best science fiction, so I speak the language well, which is a commodity that's not easy to come by in Hollywood. ~ Jon Spaihts

I don't really consider my work, on the whole, 'fringe' in my own mind; science fiction and fantasy have been pretty solidly in the mainstream for a while. ~ Jacqueline Carey

When I was in my early to mid-teens, that was a very heavy diet of science fiction and fantasy, so those were the kinds of books I tended to imagine writing someday, or even began to try to write. ~ Michael Chabon

It's a bizarre act of self-mutilation to say that 'I don't get on with science fiction and fantasy, therefore I'm never going to read any'. What a shame. All those great books that you're cutting yourself off from. ~ David Mitchell

Unfettered is an anthology filled with magic, wonderment, and hope. It is more than it's combined stories, though. It is the power of friendship. Of giving. Of a science-fiction and fantasy community that protects its own. Of humanity escaping the ugliness that often plagues it to instead create a testament to the goodness found in every heart. ~ Shawn Speakman

I'm a massive science fiction and fantasy geek. ~ Robert Kazinsky

See how the impassible judgment gives,
Into inquest and reflection -
As the inner mind brings reality. ~ Arisawe Hampton

Ideas and philosophies change just as machines do. Religions changed because of the birth control pill. Politics changes because of the hydrogen bomb. All because of science fictional inventions. ~ Ray Bradbury

Tangled onto the shuttle, we were being woven back and forth to create the same tapestry of despair and heartbreak and loss. It was so much
bigger than I could see before, and all I had done was stand at the centre of the web and feed it my anger and frustration and jealousy. ~ J.A. Ironside

He grappled with anxiety until the early hours, trying to work out the best way to tell her who he really was. But every time he played it out in his head, she always ran off screaming. How could he ask anyone to deal with this? It was his burden and his curse, and he was so afraid it would hurt her. But he was too far in, now, he loved her too much just to walk away. What was he going to do? ~ Lindsay Woodward

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

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there really is some goodness here in our world. But if goodness existed, that must mean that darkness existed as well. ~ Erica Sehyun Song

Stafford's Hypothesis on The Transference of Existence:
Even if you self-isolated, stood still, and held your breath after traveling into the past, you would still be a pebble diverting the flow of time in some way. The very transference of existence via wormholes, not interaction with past actors or events, creates paradoxes.

Time Transference has three stages:

1. The distance traversed between the origin or starting point of the wormhole and the rip in the Chronosphere (space-time continuum).
2. The transference of biological material through the rip in the Chronosphere without damage to or mutation of the genetic code of the chrono-commuter.
3. Arrival at the endpoint of the time transference - the reconstruction of the chrono-commuter's genetic material and the sealing of the rip in the Chronosphere. ~ Stewart Stafford

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

I have always loved science fiction. One of my favorite shows is 'Star Trek.' I like the trips, where it drops my mind off, because they give you a premise and all of a sudden, you say, 'Oh!' and I'm fascinated by it. ~ Leslie Nielsen

Maybe they seeded life on Earth millions of years ago, and now they're here to punish us for turning out to be such a lame species and inventing reality TV and shit? ~ Ernest Cline

His father used to tell him that you can't eat principles. And no, you couldn't. But you could live by them. ~ Dean F. Wilson

Alex thrust her hand and half her arm into the labyrinth of light.
Her stare blanked, and in the halo of the matrix her eyes and glyphs blazed so radiantly she looked as if she were being consumed by a primordial fire.

"She just stuck her hand into Machim Command's central server matrix!"

Caleb smiled, watching on in blatant awe. "She does that. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post Gothic mode. ~ Brian Aldiss

For he had acquired, as time went on, the firm conviction that any thought, even the most audacious, that any fiction, even the most insane, can one day materialize and see its fulfillment in space and time. ~ Stefan Grabinski

Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively human pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe that's what sentience would be for - if scientific breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the subconscious mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied researcher: stop thinking about the problem. Do something else. It will come to you if you just stop being conscious of it...
Don't even try to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if your lessons are all learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way? Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves, statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through sentience? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt - denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents.
Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know the only real purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't see both a ~ Peter Watts

Let's see if I got this right," she would say to herself. "I've taken an inert gas that's in the air, made it into a liquid, put some impurities in a ruby, attached a magnet, and detected the fires of creation. ~ Carl Sagan

Oh, don't get me started! I love fantasy, I read it for pleasure, even after all these years. Pat McKillip, Ursula Le Guin and John Crowley are probably my favorite writers in the field, in addition to all the writers in the Endicott Studio group - but there are many others I also admire. In children's fantasy, I'm particularly keen on Philip Pullman, Donna Jo Napoli, David Almond and Jane Yolen - though my favorite novels recently were Midori Snyder's Hannah's Garden, Holly Black's Tithe, and Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

I read a lot of mainstream fiction as well - I particularly love Alice Hoffman, A.S. Byatt, Sara Maitland, Sarah Waters, Sebastian Faulks, and Elizabeth Knox. There's also a great deal of magical fiction by Native American authors being published these days - Louise Erdrich's Antelope Wife, Alfredo Vea Jr.'s Maravilla, Linda Hogan's Power, and Susan Power's Grass Dancer are a few recent favorites.

I'm a big fan of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope - I re-read Jane Austen's novels in particular every year.Other fantasists say they read Tolkien every year, but for me it's Austen. I adore biographies, particularly biographies of artists and writers (and particularly those written by Michael Holroyd). And I love books that explore the philosophical side of art, such as Lewis Hyde's The Gift, Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life, or David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous.

(from a 2002 interview) ~ Terri Windling

A flicker of someone else's memory came to Simon and he picked up Excalibur from where he had dropped it. Carefully, he laid Excalibur on Arthur's chest. A smile crossed the king's pasty face as he closed his grazed hands around the sword's hilt. The touch of something so familiar seemed to give Arthur cause to close his eyes and after a final, relieved breath left his lips, he died. ~ Sam Whitehouse

I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do 'Harry Potter' or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didn't write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges. ~ Richard Matheson

There's an awful lot of hanging around when you're doing science fiction. Going down and waiting for them to set up, being told to go back to your dressing room while they change the track and the lighting and so on. ~ John Hurt

Howling duststorms of nuclear ashes. Human and animal bone powder. Flakes and fragments of the destroyed world. Filthy tempests of death. I am in Hell, he said. ~ C.J. Anderson

I love analogies! Let's have one.

Imagine that you dearly love, absolutely crave, a particular kind of food. There are some places in town that do this particular cuisine just amazingly. Lots of people who are into this kind of food hold these restaurants in high regard. But let's say, at every single one of these places, every now and then throughout the meal, at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn't punching them in the face, and the non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-guys who love this cuisine keep coming back so it can't be that bad, can it? Hell, half the time the white straight cis guys don't even see it, because it's always been like that and it just seems like part of the dining experience. Granted, some white straight cis guys have noticed and will talk about how they don't like it and they wish it would stop.

Every now and then, you go through a meal without the waiter punching you in the face–they just give you a small slap, or come over and sort of make a feint and then tell you they could have messed you up bad. Which, you know, that's better, right? Kind of?

Now. Somebody gets the idea to open a restaurant where everything is exactly as delicious as the other places–but the waiters won't punch you in the face. Not even once, ~ Ann Leckie

Even if you don't like Poe - he invented the detective story. And science fiction. In essence, he invented a huge part of the twentieth century. ~ Donna Tartt

He tells you to play, so you play. He tells you to curtsy, so you curtsy. He tells what you are meant to do and what you are meant not to do, so you do and you dono do. He tells you not to be angry, so you smile, you turn your eyes down, you are quiet and do exactly as he says in the hopes that this is what he wants, and then one night you realize that you have given him so much of yourself that you are nothing but the curtsy and the smile and the quiet. That you are nothing. ~ Marie Lu

What sort of an imaginary voice is that? I asked myself, suppose Columbus had heard an imaginary voice telling him to sail west. And because of it he had discovered the New World and changed human history ... We would be hard put to defend the use of the term 'imaginary' then, for that voice, since the consequences of its speaking came to affect us all. Which would have constituted greater reality, an 'imaginary' voice telling him to sail west, or a 'real' voice telling him the idea was hopeless? ~ Philip K. Dick

Ah,it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not,then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs,which think themselves new; and which are yet but old,which pretend to be young like fine ladys at the opera. ~ Bram Stoker

He never wanted to be king, and it was that very trait that made him a great king. It was the characteristic comprising all extraordinary leaders. ~ Ella Rose Carlos

Whenever you deal with science fiction you are setting up a world of rules. I think you work hard to establish the rules. And you also have to work even harder to maintain those rules, and within that find excitement and unpredictability and all that stuff. ~ Joel Edgerton

[Psi waves travel far and wide
Faster than the speed of light
Limitless is their domain
Time does not their rate detain.] ~ Marcha A. Fox

It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom," said the Voice ...
The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our sue, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings. He had been forced out of the frame, caught up into the larger pattern ... "My name also is Ransom," said the Voice. ~ C.S. Lewis

She thought he might have said her name, but it was background radiation accompanying the hum in her ears and the symphony in her head -

- a song of quantum mechanics and trajectory calculations and astroscience physics and where to go, where to go, where to… ~ G.S. Jennsen

In the distance Richard could see the skyscrapers of Los Angeles rising out of the ocean; barnacle crusted concrete and steel emerging from crashing waves. Once a symbol of economic might, they were now a macabre monument to the mortality of man. ~ Alexander Ferrick

Well, come back and have tea with us," saidMoon-Face. "Silky's got some Pop Biscuits -andI've made some Google Buns. I don't often makethem-and I tell you they're a treat! ~ Enid Blyton

The brightest minds in our field have been trying to find a definition of science fiction for these past seventy years. The short answer is, science fiction stories are given as possible, not necessarily here and now, but somewhere, sometime. ~ Larry Niven

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless. ~ Bruce Sterling

It will begin with the six who now tread the streets of a city where the stone pinnacle erects like a reed amongst long grass. Where a bridge expands across a gorge, drifts a cloud buzzing with a million stings. There, these six shall bleed. There, these six shall die, and like a plague shall spread the wings that carry the cloud till they consume the city, and with it, the strength that fuels all of your lives. Farewell, children of the new world, and may your deaths be swift. ~ Najeev Raj Nadarajah

In the 1950s, we had all these B-grade science-fiction movies. The point was to scare the public and get them to buy popcorn. No attempt was made to create movies that were somewhat inherent to the truth. ~ Michio Kaku

sustained exponential improvement in most aspects of computing, extraordinarily large amounts of digitized information, and recombinant innovation. These three forces are yielding breakthroughs that convert science fiction into everyday reality, ~ Anonymous

Gods and politics are the tools with which the godless and unprincipled manipulate the gullible. ~ Janet E. Morris

His whisper continued to stream a silent cacophony of warnings, kill and damage reports and pleas for assistance.

He allowed himself two seconds to watch it and came away with the sense they were losing. Not lost and not soon, but losing. ~ G.S. Jennsen

But life isn't neat the way a story is. And if you try to pretend it is, then you just make yourself unhappy, or screw yourself over. ~ Dexter Palmer

They came with a massive force of numbers: to rip apart the veil of existence that few knew even existed. They tore their way into our world relentlessly, and once they breathed our air and stood on the soil of our homelands, they killed and maimed, surging from their rifts in numbers incalculable. Their troops on the ground were supported by winged creatures never intended for our world. The monsters swooped from the darkness beyond, filling the sky with dark silhouettes like bats, only much more dangerous. Never before had humanity faced such a force of evil and no one was immune to their violence. ~ Cailee Francis

I think anything that opens my mind and triggers my imagination I'm reading. I like to read science fiction and imagine the character. Anything that keeps my imagination flowing. ~ Nicolas Cage