Sf Criticism Quotes

Popular and unpopular don't necessarily map to shit and shinola, of course. ~ Hal Duncan

Ray Bradbury's entire oeuvre exemplifies the crumbling of SCIENCE FICTION into the open interplay of science fiction, fantasy and horror. ~ Hal Duncan

Science fiction long assimilated the notion that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (much to its benefit), while fantasy long since assimilated the notion that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology (much to my boredom). ~ Hal Duncan

Brain out, sponge in' fiction. ~ Hal Duncan

Never argue with your critics if they attack you emotionally while working on your dream goal rather stay focused on it without taking their opinion personally because the best revenge is a massive success. ~ Dhiraj Kumar Raj

The flip side of this is that they will not tolerate criticism and can be scathing of anyone who criticizes them. They will often attack and belittle the person who is being critical, instead of dealing with the points the person is making. They do this usually because they have no defence against the criticism, they have been found out. So it's easier to destroy the reputation of the critical person instead. ~ David McDermott

I might even pursue a career in politics. If I do, I will have had great practice dealing with the avalanche of daily criticism from working at Fox News and being a former Miss America. I'm ready for anything! ~ Gretchen Carlson

I had people saying 'it's all in your head'. Do you honestly think I want to feel this way? ~ Sonia Estrada

But that there is a simple relation between literary and other fictions seems, if one attends to it, more obvious than has appeared. If we think first of modern fictions, it can hardly be an accident that ever since Nietzsche generalized and developed the Kantian insights, literature has increasingly asserted its right to an arbitrary and private choice of fictional norms, just as historiography has become a discipline more devious and dubious because of our recognition that its methods depend to an unsuspected degree on myths and fictions. After Nietzsche it was possible to say, as Stevens did, that 'the final belief must be in a fiction.' This poet, to whom the whole question was of perpetual interest, saw that to think in this way was to postpone the End--when the fiction might be said to coincide with reality--for ever; to make of it a fiction, an imaginary moment when 'at last' the world of fact and the mundo of fiction shall be one. Such a fiction--the last section of Notes toward a Supreme Fiction is, appropriately, the place where Stevens gives it his fullest attention--such a fiction of the end is like infinity plus one and imaginary numbers in mathematics, something we know does not exist, but which helps us to make sense of and to move in the world. Mundo is itself such a fiction. I think Stevens, who certainly thought we have to make our sense out of whatever materials we find to hand, borrowed it from Ortega. His general doctrine of fictions he took from Vaihinge ~ Frank Kermode

We cannot hope to win the ideological battle against Islam without criticism of Islam, it is essential that we continue to criticize Islam. ~ Ibn Warraq

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. ~ Walter Benjamin

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism. ~ Will Self

In his description of the melancholic, Freud says that such patients are particularly perceptive with respect to their self-image:
When in his heightened self-criticism he describes himself as petty, egoistic, dishonest, lacking in independence, one whose sole aim has been to hide the weaknesses of his own nature, it may be, so far as we know, that he has come pretty near to understanding himself: we only wonder why a man has to be ill before he can be accessible to a truth of this kind. ~ Sigmund Freud

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am a model of positivity compared to the kinds of vitriol, the kinds of destructive criticisms that Labor members of parliament have been making of each other. ~ Tony Abbott

Once a Buddha, always a Buddha, Sam. Dust off some of your old parables. You have about fifteen minutes.'
Sam held out his hand. Give me some tobacco and a paper. ~ Roger Zelazny

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That's why I don't listen to anything that's anonymous. But it's hard; when there's something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person. ~ Brene Brown

Australian SF book publishing has undergone a boom recently, and sometimes it's easier for new writers to sell a book to a local publisher first, which then makes a US edition more likely. ~ Greg Egan

If the relation of morality to art were based simply on the demand that art be concerned with values, then almost every author should satisfy it even if he wrote with his prick while asleep. (Puritans will object to the language in that sentence, and feminists to the organ, and neither will admire or even notice how it was phrased.) ~ William H Gass

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion. ~ Walter Benjamin

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law. ~ Kurt Huber

Every time you make the right choice in the face of potential criticism you build strength that makes choosing the right easier the next time. When you make it clear that you will not vary from your standards, you will be led to individuals like yourself and the criticism from others will become less intense. ~ Richard G. Scott

The mother myth gives great cover to unloving mothers, who far too often operate undisturbed while their husbands, other family members, and society deflect any criticism or scrutiny aimed at them. Most societies glorify mothers, as if the mere act of giving birth makes them inherently capable of nurturing. That's simply not true. ~ Susan Forward

Tessa and I started out with conflicting realities, found that when each of us reality-tested the other's, it collapsed. But now, instead of mutually destroying each other's realities, we are shaping a joint one between us. If two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion; the basic test that distinguishes reality from hallucination is the consensus gentium, that one other or several others see it too. This is the idios kosmos, the private dream, contrasted to the shared dream of us all, the koinos kosmos. What is new in our time is that we are beginning to see the plastic, trembling quality of the koinos kosmos - which scares us, its insubstantiality - and the more than mere vapor quality of the hallucination. Like sf, a third reality is formed halfway between. ~ Philip K. Dick

We have then, in the first part of The Faerie Queene, four of the seven deadly sins depicted in the more important passages of the four several books; those sins being much more elaborately and powerfully represented than the virtues, which are opposed to them, and which are personified in the titular heroes of the respective books. The alteration which made these personified virtues the centre each of a book was probably part of the reconstruction on the basis of Aristotle Ethics.
The nature of the debt to Aristotle suggests that Spenser did not borrow directly from the Greek, but by way of modern translations. ~ Janet Spens

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of what you're doing is as valuable as gold ~ Elon Musk

A pinch of praise is worth a pound of scorn. A dash of encouragement is more helpful than a dipper of pessimism. A cup of kindness is better than a cupboard of criticism. ~ William Arthur Ward

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical. ~ John Cage

Every new generation of SF writers remakes cyberpunk - a genre often laced with dystopian subtexts - in its own image. ~ Paul Di Filippo

Woolf drew on her memories of her holidays in Cornwall for To the Lighthouse, which was conceived in part as an elegy on her parents. Her father was a vigorous walker and an Alpinist of some renown, a member of the Alpine Club and editor of the Alpine Journal from 1868 to 1872; he was the first person to climb the Schreckhorn in the Alps and he wrote on Alpine pleasures in The Playground of Europe (1871). By the time he married Julia Duckworth in 1878, however, a more sedentary Leslie Stephen was the established editor of the Cornhill Magazine, from which he later resigned to take up the editorship of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1882, the year of Woolf 's birth. Stephen laboured on this monumental Victorian enterprise until 1990, editing single-handed the first twenty-six volumes and writing well over 300 biographical entries. He also published numerous volumes of criticism, the most important of which were on eighteenth-century thought and literature. ~ Jane Goldman

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he ~ Ben Jonson

It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and meter rhythm. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains, which he himself could never hope to hear. ~ John Ruskin

Until both employers' and workers' groups assume responsibility for chastising their own recalcitrant children, they can vainly bay the moon about "ignorant" and "unfair" public criticism. Moreover, their failure to impose voluntarily upon their own groups codes of decency and honor will result in more and more necessity for government control. ~ Mary Barnett Gilson

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide. ~ Franz Grillparzer

We gobble up cable news' insistence that both sides of an argument are equally valid and South Park's insistence that both sides are equally stupid, because taking a firm stand on anything opens us up to criticism. ~ Lindy West

He clasped his hands in front of his chest, stood for a moment in silence to think, and then spoke, "Since it is obvious that you want to know the truth, I'll show it to you in its completeness." But then he narrowed his eyes. "What I'm about to show you, what you're about to see, you'll have to keep to yourself. You will be the only human being who will know the truth of why I brought you and the others here. The truth sometimes can be painful. Well, for this reason, I ask once again: are you ready for such responsibility? ~ Stjepan Varesevac Cobets

It's
my God
like you stretched a tarp across a stadium to turn it into a giant tom-tom and crashed a 747 into it. ~ Neal Stephenson

The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive. ~ Clifford Geertz

Most of the criticism I get is that I am too positive and too hopeful ... in my words, I don't beat people down enough. ~ Joel Osteen

I don't think of myself as a critic or teacher either, but simply - and at the obvious risk of disingenuousness - as someone who teaches, writes drama criticism (and other things) and feels that the American compulsion to take your identity from your profession, with its corollary of only one trade to a practitioner, may be a convenience to society but is burdensome and constricting to yourself. ~ Richard Gilman

In serious Victorian fiction, as in Shakespearian tragedy, melodrama normally functions as metaphor. The author finds a vivid equivalent for a reality too elaborate or too extended to be briefly depicted. ~ Ian Gregor

The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time. ~ Rod Serling

It's often the case that successful people invite criticism. ~ Michael Gove

Because it is written by a nineteenth-century American, and because of its closeness to the twentieth century, The Portrait of a Lady foregoes Victorian affirmations. The price it pays, however (together with several twentieth-century novels) is that it eventually leaves the reader, along with its heroine, 'en Vair' amid its self-reflections. ~ Ian Gregor

The right to choose to abort a fetus is critical, as is the ability to effect that choice in real life, so it's great that Hillary Clinton wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment. But without welfare, single-payer health care, a minimum wage of at least $15--all policies she staunchly opposes--many people have to forgo babies they'd really love to have. That's not really a choice.

It seems ill-conceived to have tethered feminism to such a narrow issue as abortion. Yet it makes sense from an insular Beltway fundraising perspective to focus on an issue that makes no demands--the opposite, really--of the oligarch class; this is probably a big reason why EMILY'S List has never dabbled in backing universal pre-K or paid maternity leave; a major reason 'reproductive choice' has such a narrow and negative definition in the American political discourse.

The thing is, an abortion is by definition a story you want to forget, not repeat and relive. And for the same reason abortion pills will never be the blockbuster moneymakers heartburn medications are, abortion is a consummately foolish thing to attempt to build a political movement around. It happens once or twice in a woman's lifetime.

Kids, on the other hand, are with you forever. A more promising movement--one that goes against everything Hillary Clinton stands for--might take that to heart. ~ Liza Featherstone

Compliments and criticism are all ultimately based on some form of projection. ~ Billy Corgan

I felt an inner peace and softness. My Berlin Wall had been cracked; the toxic relationship between me and that critical voice had been severed. ~ Penny De Villiers