Take a scientific fact or theory, add a futuristic or other-worldly setting, stir in an imaginative plot and fascinating characters, and a science fiction novel emerges from the cosmic mix.

US Constitution is unconstitutional.” – The United States Supreme Court, 2079

I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own...

We have to destroy the radioactive brain of Madame Curie.

Sometimes he’d dream of hunting for Adam the Usurper twenty years in the future, or of Doctor Simmons sending Aero to burrow into his head and steal his most secret thoughts and desires.

You could’ve at least let me know you weren’t dead by the way. I was actually kind of sad about that.” “That’s a pretty incredible sentiment, coming from you.

Normally, I don’t take to drinking so early in the morning, but I bend the rules when I get my ass kicked before sunrise.”–Thomas Morelli

Love?’ Echo was right. All destruction started from love, didn’t it?

So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they...

When I think of war, I see blood. Pain and suffering. Nothing good comes from war.But there is good. There will be an outcome. One side will find peace, solace. While the other will end...

the crescent sun is high, the moon low; life is not for the faint-hearted; so why the fuck should art be?

scientifically.

Fleshers used to spin fantasies about aliens arriving to ‘conquer’ Earth, to steal their ‘precious’ physical resources, to wipe them out for fear of ‘competition’…as if a species capable of making the journey wouldn’t have...

And like a good neighbor, Alpha Centauri is there.”Touched by an Alien

Truth is mighty and will prevail.

The mistakes we make when we are young are just as important to us as food or air. Without learning how to do things the wrong way, we can never learn how to do them...

God, she was beautiful. Hair a tangled mess, clothes torn, lips pale and swollen, skin streaked in dirt. And she was so damn beautiful and flawed and perfect.

Holy Jesus God, it’s the Gerps shootin’ us up!” the manager shouted. He hadn’t known whether to say Germans or Japs, and came out with both at once.

You’re a kid. I didn’t know we taught kids manners anymore.

The best sci-fi stories use the fantastical to remind us of the reality of who we are today, the hope of who we may become tomorrow, and the shame of who we were yesterday.

Bellamy had come down from scanning the heavens only to find himself in the depths of hell.

As far as I know, there’s nothing more dangerous than a man who doesn’t care if he lives or dies.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you...

Seconds ebb and wane. She’s not afraid of her voice anymore, but she’s not entirely sure she trusts it. She’s seen the damage caused with a single word. Right now, each one is a weapon,...

Sometimes it’s hard for me to understand that people can believe in me, that they can trust that I’ll be anything more than the sum of the skeletons in my closet. But I can be....

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,...

When they would spar, Calic held nothing back, as if he possessed a deep rage clawing for release. He demonstrated a ferocity Sebastian had never seen the likes of. Sebastian had the same rage bubbling...

Humans would never tell the simple truth when a lie was available….

You hunt and catch your own food. Am I correct?””We are fierce predators of the night,” DeChevue said proudly.Edwin tried again, “You hunt and gather your own food?”DeChevue still didn’t get it. “Yes, M’sieur. We...

Survival is insufficient

Souls, Ms. Ellis, are for people who blame devils for their illness and praise angels for the cure. I do neither.

When I look back now, I realize what a trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I...

Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.

And the Flatline aligned the nose of Kuang’s sting with the center of the dark below. And dove. Case’s sensory input warped with their velocity. His mouth filled with an aching taste of blue. His...

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They...

The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine.Reality doesn’t offer this assurance, so it’s very easy to develop the mistaken impression...

To the brave crew and passengers of the Kobayshi Maru…sucks to be you.

We are all of the same substance, the same life. Though there are many differences between us, those are merely the shadows that delineate our boundaries. Our light is the same.

A metric fuckton of dumb so epically mind-destroyingly beyond a bad idea that there’s not a chance they would go there.

Mortal has not been a habitable place for a long time. We have been trying to survive patching it but one day it will break completely. Twinmortal is the future for all of us. You...

The worst kind of victim was the kind that was aware of nothing.

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens,...

Science fiction is held in low regard as a branch of literature, and perhaps it deserves this critical contempt. But if we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as...

Good science fiction has its roots in good science.

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself....

Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; nochange. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what istheirs.

Wanna play cards?

Personally, I’d like to see the word genre taken out back and shot, a bullet in the back of its head, if it’s going to be so overloaded with meanings it’s just gibberish skewed to...

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, but in fact the message was this: So long and...