Science Fiction Book Quotes

I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. ~ Ray Bradbury

I was raised on comic books, and I love science fiction. ~ Mayim Bialik

It depends on you how you mold them and shape their thinking. Depending on the values they get from you, they will either be the angels or demons of time. ~ Varun Sayal

When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination. ~ Mark Bradford

The best ending ever, for a science fiction book - or any novel, now that I think about it - was in Rendezvous With Rama. You know that you're at the end of the book and yet, there is no resolution. Then he hits you with those last six words. Better yet, the power is in the very last word. Wow! ~ John Gaver

I have 20 or 30 books completely plotted out in my mind - mysteries, thrillers, horror, romance, science fiction. You name it. ~ Christopher Paolini

Looking out on the second day of our mission, I became aware that in the far distance, there was a distinctive-looking star. It stood out because, while all the other stars stayed exactly the same size and shape, this one got bigger and bigger as we got closer to it. At some point it stopped being a point of light and started becoming something three-dimensional, morphing into a strange bug-like thing with all kinds of appendages. And then, isolated against this inky background, it started to look like a small town.
Which is in fact what it is: an outpost that humans have built, far from Earth. The International Space Station. It's every science fiction book come true, every little kid's dream realized: a large, capable, fully human creation orbiting up in the universe.
And it felt miraculous that soon we'd be docked there, and the next phase of our expedition would begin. ~ Chris Hadfield

Dune is the bestselling science fiction book of all time. It's something you really need to read in your lifetime. If you're going to read The Lord of the Rings, which everyone should, then you have to read Dune, too. ~ Kevin J. Anderson

The highest compliment I can give a science fiction book is that it's 'plausibly surreal' - it manages to feel like a relentless extrapolation from today even as it overwhelms with unexpected consequences of that extrapolation. ~ Jamais Cascio

You know, the way I feel, if I read a science fiction book by a new writer which is a lot better than what I do, instead of going on a bummer right away and saying, "Oh Christ, I'm obsolete, I'm outdated, I've lost it." I have this tremendous sense of joy. I don't have to write all the great goddamn science fiction in the world. Somebody else is going to carry this torch. It's such a relief to sit with my feet up on the wall and to know that if I never wrote another book science fiction is going ahead. ~ Philip K. Dick

I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction. I like science fiction where there's a scientific lesson, for example - when the science fiction book changes one thing but leaves the rest of science intact and explores the consequences of that. That's actually very valuable. ~ Richard Dawkins

The one by L. Ron Hubbard ... I'm not in favor of his religion by any means, but he wrote a book called Battlefield Earth that was a very fun science fiction book. ~ Mitt Romney

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

This is a Spartacan fighting knife. Heard of the Spartacan Scouts? Rough boys. This knife belonged to one of them. He died saving my life. ~ Henry V. O'Neil

Humor is rare in science fiction ... there's so little of it that it automatically reminds you of other heroes with that acerbic humor when you find it. ~ John Scalzi

Awesome date, Shade. You took me to murder highway."
He shrugged. "Predators. Prey. It's just the natural way of things. ~ Amanda Bouchet

Find your self love. Find that precious thing inside you that
makes you want to live. And when you've found it, hold on to it with one
hand, and use the other to claw your way back home.
-Ripple ~ Valjeanne Jeffers

I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you're frightened of is to make fun of it. That's why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds. ~ Iain Banks

There is so much morbo festering between these two sides that they would have to employ a very powerful priest to exorcise the phenomenon, always presuming that they wanted to. It's not merely that they hate each other with an intensity that can truly shock the outsider, but that each encounter between them always has a new ingredient. This is the essence of morbo. It feeds off itself and keeps growing until it becomes a self-regulating and self-perpetuating organism, like some sinister creature from a science fiction fantasy. ~ Phil Ball

There are trappings of science fiction which I kind of embrace, but there are also cliches which I run from. ~ David Twohy

Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun. ~ Brian W. Aldiss

I am your enemy. Your enemy in this world. The whole universe is filled with mankind, and there are many planets out there where men forget they are a part of something larger, greater. And I am only one among many who have come to remind you planetary retrogrades of precisely that. You are not some indigenous species of this world. You are only one outreaching hand of mankind. ~ Bruno Goncalves

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

You Never Have a Second Chance for a First Good Impression ~ Doris-Maria Heilmann

Science fiction is not about the future. Like all other fiction, it is about the present. It simply uses different techniques to show us who we are, who we might be, and whom we ought to become. ~ Orson Scott Card

There are loads of sociopolitical, racial, class and future-planet situations that really interest me, but I'm not really interested in making a film about them in a film that feels like reality because people view that in a different way. I like using science fiction to talk about subjects through the veneer of science fiction. ~ Neill Blomkamp

I have three copies of the first edition, which sold in double figures, speaking loosely; there was a moment when Blond's 'Lord Malquist and Mr Moon' sold 67 copies, or some such number, in Venezuela - a mystery I never solved. I have never been to Venezuela. I remember going into Foyles' bookshop in 1966 and being gratified to see a stack of Malquist-and-Moons on the New Fiction table. I counted them; there were twelve. A week or two later I went in again; there they were. I counted them again; there were thirteen! I saw at once what was happening. People were leaving my book at bookshops. ~ Tom Stoppard

Draden didn't move, staying as still as any predator with his gaze fixed on his prey. No muscle moved. ~ Christine Feehan

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe. ~ Clifford D. Simak

As a rule of thumb, it was always safer if the Commander-in-Chief formulated a risky plan. ~ Rowena Cherry

There is a long-standing trend of documented trend of UFO appearances and these appearances have led to a fascinating worldwide yet still unsolved enigma. 'Disclosure: The Future is Now' takes a close non-fictional look at the history of UFO sightings and related areas such as alien abductions.and alleged government conspiracies. Disclosure is also a science fiction story of how events in the future may return to affect the Earth at the present time. 'Release From Stasis' is a fictional sequel to the first book's story. ~ Graham Clingbine

The following is a fictionalized and utterly false account of the events that most definitely did not happen on June 9-10, 1967. And yet, while all the characters in this story are little green men and women running around inside my head, the events that served as inspiration, the historical facts, as it were, must be considered no less than a sibling of the tale contained in these pages: the story I didn't write, but could have written--the book this could have been, but isn't. ~ Montague Kobbe

Indeed, many movies about artificial intelligence are so divorced from scientific reality that one suspects they are just allegories of completely different concerns. Thus the 2015 movie Ex Machina seems to be about an AI expert who falls in love with a female robot only to be duped and manipulated by her. But in reality, this is not a movie about the human fear of intelligent robots. It is a movie about the male fear of intelligent women, and in particular the fear that female liberation might lead to female domination. Whenever you see a movie about an AI in which the AI is female and the scientist is male, it's probably a movie about feminism rather than cybernetics. For why on earth would an AI have a sexual or a gender identity? Sex is a characteristic of organic multicellular beings. What can it possibly mean for a non-organic cybernetic being? ~ Yuval Noah Harari

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

We have a very short window in which to accomplish a great deal, one measured in minutes rather than hours.

"We succeed, and we will have freed dozens of galaxies and species from tyranny. We succeed, and we will have saved our home, our friends and our loved ones from the looming threat of annihilation. We succeed, and everyone has a future. So let's get it done. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know. ~ Ted Chiang

How do you know I love you?" asked Nadika.
"Because you think my telekinesis is fun. Because you want steak sandwiches at our wedding dinner. Because you pretend to be angry when you want to laugh. Because you smile when you're sleeping, and when you're waking up you hold on to me."
"Marry me."
"Okay."
Conversation between Mickey and Nadika from Mickey & Nadika, An Adventure Across Time and Space. ~ Jenna Lindsey

Life rushes when we're weak and drags when we're ready, always at odds with what we need and when. ~ Halo Scot

You're insane."

"It'll work."

"Which does not alter the fact that you are insane. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish, and all the writers, keenly interested in human welfare whom I know, laugh at the prohibition law. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

While fiction is often impossible, it should not be implausible. ~ Aristotle.

What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time. ~ Doris Lessing

We can celebrate how far we've come from our sexist past when women and men are equally represented in the pages of science fiction anthologies. ~ Annalee Newitz

Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in caves ... if we weren't already extinct. ~ William C. Samples

The death takes a moment and life lasts forever. Why spend eternity worried about a singularity? ~ Abram Gitspof

Reality is but several levels of consciousness that can be accepted or dismissed depending on what one perceives. ~ Lauren Lola

You can use logic to justify just about anything, that's its power and it's flaw. ~ Captain Katherine Janeway

I can't help what I have any more than you can help what you don't ~ Neal Shusterman

It's degrading being routinely subjected to a battery of medical tests to ensure I continue to deserve a place in this new world. ~ Siobhan Davis

The thin girl was gulping down one of Richard's bananas in what was, Richard reflected, the least erotic display of banana-eating he had ever seen. ~ Neil Gaiman

The box jellyfish takes you into an area of what I'd call science fiction. You feel like you've been dipped in hot burning oil. You burst into flames. ~ Diana Nyad

Science fiction, as I mentioned before, writes about what is neither impossible nor possible; the fact is that, when the question of possibility comes up in science fiction, the author can only reply that nobody knows. We haven't been there yet. We haven't discovered that yet. Science fiction hasn't happened. ~ Joanna Russ

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

The transition from subject to observer was instantaneous, sensations, sights, and sounds changing from instruments of torment to a fascinating display of electronic signals. The spectra included thousands of frequencies, visual, audio and psi bands alike, each customized for a specific effect, a pseudo symphony for an audience of one. ~ Marcha A. Fox

Where do I go from here? What road do I travel down where you are not by my side? What life do I lead where you are not there to guide me? ~ Halo Scot

Many science fiction writers are literary autodidacts who focus on the genre primarily as a literature of ideas rather than as a pure art form or a tool for the introspective examination of the human condition. I'm not entirely at ease with that self-description. ~ Charles Stross

Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes.
So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise. ~ Sue Grafton