Social Science Fiction Quotes

This is the legacy of a compassionate bunch. Our fate now rests on the whims of men. ~ Leot Felton

[Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings. ~ Isaac Asimov

Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world. Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind. ~ Paul Kriwaczek

I'm already under the covers when he comes in. I watch as he takes off his shirt and jeans, and climbs into bed beside me. On any other occasion, the sight and feel of his near naked body would send my blood pressure into orbit, but I'm so exhausted by the events of today that I'm incapable of feeling anything even close to desire. And he doesn't ask anything of me. ~ Siobhan Davis

I wanted moments like this to last forever. If it couldn't, I wanted to play it on repeat so I wouldn't forget the details of every second. ~ Megan Duke

Someday, you're going to have to trust the people who love you. If you understand nothing else, understand this. People who love you--people like me--are actually here to help you through life, not complicate it. ~ Heidi Tankersley

Distinctiveness of This Book The book claims to be distinctive in several ways. First, it presents the breadth of case study research and its scholarly heritage, but also at a detailed and practical level. Other works do not offer as comprehensive a combination. Thus, the earlier versions of this book have been used as a complete portal to the world of case study research. Among its most distinctive features, the book provides a workable technical definition of the case study as a research method and its differentiation from other social science research methods (Chapter 1), an extensive discussion of case study designs (Chapter 2), and a continually expanding presentation of case study analysis techniques (Chapter 5 ~ Robert K. Yin

Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places, at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Imagine a perfect world ~ Bruce McQueen

Genres are what holds each story together and help it along, but in no way should it ever be treated as a boundary, especially for a reader. If I've only read science fiction books, I would probably consider myself mad. ~ Lauren Lola

The shape I'm in, I could donate my body to science fiction. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

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

My lifelong battle to control cabling began at this time. All the cables I have ever owned would stretch to the moon and back. Except they would not be able to because they would fail to connect up with each other. Anyone can write a story in which humans can teleport, travel in time and make themselves invisible A future in which there are cable compatibility standards, that would be real science fiction. ~ Stephen Fry

Despite centuries of English literature, the most famous split infinitive in all of history comes from Star Trek. ~ R. Curtis Venture

Children are turning themselves into monsters and, quite frankly, it is your fault. You initiated the creation of this technology, then you allowed it to slip through your fingers."

Miriam's jaw tightened. "I disagree, but now is the least optimal time imaginable for assigning blame. People are dying, and I will not stand around debating semantics with you while they are. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Expect an army of Vigil drones, nearly as a many Praesidis guards, a Machim ground detachment of super-soldiers and at least one Inquisitor. Oh, and security barriers everywhere. Possibly some of those mechs we met on Helix Retention, too. You Humans have kicked off a shitstorm of epic proportions."

Alex spread her arms wide in an exagerrated shrug. "It's one of our best skills. ~ G.S. Jennsen

People want to think of economics as a natural science, like physics, with the comforting reliability of simple-to-understand theories like F=MA. Unfortunately, it isn't. Economics is a social science, and the so-called theories are really social and moral constructs. ~ Nick Hanauer

Without looking, I felt his stare burn my skin. A burn way more pleasurable than bacon grease. I had him. He just didn't know it yet. ~ Lynn Vroman

He [William Jennings Bryan] recognized that what Darwin proposed on the biological level, when applied on the societal level, might legitimize an ideology that supports the survival of the fittest, with all of its dire complications. Byran was able to envision the kind of society that Social Darwinism would create- the kind of exploitation that comes from unbridled capitalism, for instance- and chose to war against it. ~ Tony Campolo

This is the Rock, sweetheart," the owner added. "There's no tragedy you can't profit from. ~ Henry Mosquera

Why is it that you guys are so conservative in your views, in the face of the almost complete lack of understanding of what is going on in your field?" I asked. The answer was as simple as it was surprising. "If we [cosmologists] don't accept some common picture of the universe, however unsupported by the facts, there would be nothing to bind us together as a scientific community. Since it is unlikely that any picture that we use will be falsified in our lifetime, one theory is as good as any other." The explanation was social, not scientific. ~ Per Bak

...the only way to be free from the fear of surveillance is to be absolutely harmless ~ Claire North

If someone's a racist, punch them in the mouth so they will be sadder, and therefore less likely to stereotype. (Even if Fargas's theory is flawed, on the upside, at least you've punched a racist in the mouth.) ~ Jeff Wilser

She climbed into the shuttle and got in his personal space. "Who are you working for?"

The man spat in her face.

She rolled her eyes and wiped the spittle off her cheek. Then she punched him square across the jaw before grabbing him by the throat. "WHO are you working for? ~ G.S. Jennsen

Science Fiction is what they promised; Cyberpunk is what we got. ~ Sean Kennedy

The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer. ~ Margaret Mead

Science is no inexorable march to truth, mediated by the collection of objective information and the destruction of ancient superstition. Scientists, as ordinary human beings, unconsciously reflect in their theories the social and political constraints of their times. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Struggling transforms her captor into a Chinese finger trap. She's suffocating. Sucking in air without relief. Her lungs expand. Contract. Expand. They fill with lies and broken promises. With despair and lost hope. Each inhale is empty. Invisible hands reach into her body and constrict around her windpipe. She watches her friends collapse like supernovae, their cognizance disappearing into a black hole. A black hole she's quickly cascading into. The dark consumes, bleeds into her vision. She blinks. Catches icy blue eyes peeking out from the shadows. ~ Laura Kreitzer

May the gods ignore you. ~ Lynda Williams

A mystery reader, confronted with a large mass of sudden detail, is going to go - subconsciously, at least - "Aha! somewhere in all of this the writer has planted a Clue!", and look for that; a reader trained exclusively in mainstream literary fiction is likely to say, "Aha! all this emphasis must point to something of Thematic Importance!", but an experienced reader of science fiction is going to assume that he or she is meant to take all of those details and out of them construct a world.

Which is why the writer of a science-fiction mystery with literary ambitions is trying to do a quadruple somersault off the trapeze without a net. ~ Debra Doyle

While much of modern behavioral and social science treats individuals as autonomous agents, it is absolutely clear that the way we think and act is enormously influenced by the culture in which we live. It also is clear that the major elements of modern culture-science, technology, law, music, and religion-have evolved over time in a quite concrete sense of the term. Mesoudi makes these arguments very well and his book is a very good read. ~ Richard R. Nelson

You will only be as good, as changing, as imaginative as those who control you and those who would presume that society will benefit only by their dictates at the expense of the freedoms of all the others. ~ Volker G. Fremuth

I probably spend more time writing than reading science fiction. I find that science-fiction literature is so reactive to all the literature that's gone before that it's sort of like a fractal. It's gone to a level of detail that the average person could not possibly follow unless you're a fan. It iterates upon many prior generations of iterations. ~ James Cameron

There were no colonies on Earth. It was all a scam the Martians were using to con the rest of the universe. There had been no first contact. Her knees quivered, and all her muscles tensed. She was first contact. ~ Patricia Eimer

There's more to research than just looking up facts. Eventually, you have to make subjective calls. If you're writing a science fiction novel, there's probably some speculative technology in it. You'll have to decide how to project existing technology forward in a plausible way. ~ Andy Weir

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups ... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. ~ Philip K. Dick

Humans have been doin' awful things to each other throughout history. Humanity's not as great as you make it out to be. I do what needs to be done, and that's that. We're about to go to war, Earl. There ain't no humanity in war. ~ Michael Monroe

Therm-bombs! Drop 'em right on us! I been roasted before - it's nothing! ~ Henry V. O'Neil

The dead are not always so dumb as you think, it takes much more to die than you would believe. ~ E.J. Koh

... and so I fear that in his unstable condition he is being manipulated. ~ Trevor Alan Foris