… But my voice is too soft. The wind picks up my words and swallows them whole.

All worlds of fiction are alternative realities.

Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?

By the time the Somnambulist had set her creaking bones to rest on their assigned landing pad, Holden had lost all patience with human stupidity.So, of course, it came out to meet him.

Spader and I were nearly killed. Three times. We were also robbed and witnessed a gruesome murder. Happy birthday to me!

Blacker than the night, the wedge penetrated the darkness. An F 117 raced by, the roar from its engines screaming through the interior of the chopper, and then it sliced away a piece of sky...

When I wake I ask myself, how much longer before they will just let me die?” – Tier, Clutch

If her daughter’s ship had been disintegrated in space there would never be evidence of it, never an answer to what had happened to her.If she stopped to ponder the implications she might break. And...

Never take offense. Even if someone is robbing you blind, it’s usually nothing personal. Survival is a funny thing, and we all react differently to it. Some react to fear and forget to be human...

[Telzey] took out a pocket edition law library and sat down at the table. She clicked on the library’s viewscreen, tapped the clearing and index buttons. Behind the screen, one of the multiple rows of...

With faces entirely invisible through suits, it was hard to be sure, but my impression was that he was watching me and copying my every move. I felt this proved he was intelligent.

I had said that Le Guin’s worlds were real because her people were so real, and he said yes, but the people were so real because they were the people the worlds would have produced....

Ask very pointed questions. Sharp as sword blades, or laser blasts, if you catch my meaning.

You’ve never been to another planet, have you Aimee?””No, but I’ve been to Disney World.

A glacial chill rushes through Gage. He whips around just in time to see arms clutch Summer around the middle and drag her into the dark. Panic seizes him, and he takes off after her,...

And so the result of several years of Everybody Shareskyism, other than slaughtering people, is for everybody to stand around and stare blankly at each other.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth,” the long out-of-print science fiction writer went on.

Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.

From the dark forest that bordered the soft ploughed fields, came a low cry that did not belong to any animal. It was accompanied by the sound of branches bending and snapping, and the splintering...

What do you think it is that makes a man”I started on the Definition. He cut me of after five words.”It is not!” he said. “A wax figure could have all that, and he’d still...

Your father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vain—Maddy glanced at Tally—and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock...

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time,...

She didn’t watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon, like a...

It’s a long story. Want a refill?””No, let’s start the steak. Where’s the button?””Right here.””Well, push it.””Me? You offered to cook.””Ben Caxton, I will lie here and starve before I will get up to push...

All the speed he took, all the turns he’d taken and the corners he’d cut in Night City, and still he’d see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless...

F***ing triffids.

Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me…only he’s an imbecile.

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons,...

A moment later the scowling face of Admiral Jellico appeared on the screen. He looked as ill-humored as ever. Privately, Calhoun felt that somebody should send an away team into Jellico’s ass, to determine just...

I never read to kill time. Killing time is like killing someone’s wife or a child. There is nothing more precious for me than time.

Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of “escape.”...

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

Now, this was a combination that she wouldn’t dare to dream of, even in her worst nightmare.

I never really had control over my life because no one does. We’re all tossed into this loop because there is only ‘life.’ There is no ‘my life this, my life that.’ I take part...

Leela: Why are we listening to them? It is a waste of time.The Doctor; It is difficult to know what will be a waste of time until after the time has been wasted, by which...

Innocents will be caught up in your maelstrom, their lives torn apart. People you have never met, and will never know will die beneath your shadow if you do not stop. You tear the galaxy...

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.

In the empty expanses of space, the wandering traders need men like myself to care for the spiritual side of a life so given over to commerce, and worldly pursuits.

You can scoff at opinions. You can reject hypotheses. You can discard theories out of hand. But you cannot reject the facts

She prayed for that all through the night, uncertain to Whom or what, but with a feeling that almost resembled faith.

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before–and thus was the Empire forged.

There is no time for fear. It’s much too interesting.

In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards.

He let out a short laugh. “You sound like Sherlock Holmes. You gonna pull out a magnifying glass? A pipe, maybe?

Alex, I can’t.

His punch knocked her back a meter into the wall. His fist had moved of his own volition, carrying a rage and frustration all its own. To his dismay, she didn’t fall. People so small...

Perhaps love doesn’t divert sound judgment.

If we can’t write diversity into sci-fi, then what’s the point? You don’t create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.

… Evren, eski küçük oyunların sahnelenemeyeceği kadar büyük. Sahnenin evrensel büyüklüğüne olayların, işlerin ve eylemlerin evrensel genişliği uymalı. Yoksa yanılıyor muyum? Yıldızlar çağında da sevi olacak, kıskançlık, alçaklık ,büyüklük, cimrilik… Evet, akan bir suda her...

People didn’t love all of this when they still had it. If you love something, you do what’s best for it. You don’t destroy it.