Science Fiction quotes

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Science fiction reflects scientific thought; a fiction of things-to-come based on things-on-hand.

Benjamin Appel

Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us, the possible consequences, and the possible solutions.

Isaac Asimov

Science fiction is a controlled way to think and dream about the future. An integration of the mood and attitude of science (the objective universe) with the fears and hopes that spring from the unconscious. Anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out. Nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible.

Gregory Benford

Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together.

Ray Bradbury

Science Fiction: fiction based on rational speculation regarding the human experience of science and its resultant technologies.

Reginald Bretnor

Science Fiction is a subdivision of fantastic literature which employs science or rationalism to create an appearance of plausibility.

Paul Brians

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

David Brin

At its best, science fiction is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent skepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.

John Brunner

Science Fiction is literature about the future, telling stories of the marvels we hope to see--or for our descendants to see--tomorrow, in the next century, or in the limitless duration of time

Terry Carr

The major distinction between fantasy and science fiction is, simply, that science fiction uses one, or a very, very few new postulates, and develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates. Fantasy makes its rules as it goes along...The basic nature of fantasy is "The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!" The basic rule of science fiction is "Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences."

John W. Campbell, Jr.

Therefore, no matter how the world makes out in the next few centuries, a large class of readers at least will not be too surprised at anything. They will have been through it all before in fictional form, and will not be too paralyzed with astonishment to try to cope with contingencies as they arise.

L. Sprague De Camp

Science Fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.

James E. Gunn

Science Fiction is what we point at when we say it.

Damon Knight

The reality of science is that it takes 40 years to get to Jupiter, and that's a dull show.

Glen Morgan (producer of sci-fi series "Space: Above and Beyond")

The future depicted in a good SF story ought to be in fact possible, or at least plausible. That means that the writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you.

Frederik Pohl

A work belongs in the genre of science fiction if its narrative world is at least somewhat different from our own, and if that difference is apparent against the background of an organized body of knowledge.

Eric S. Rabkin

For me, science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

Gene Roddenberry (Creator of Star Trek)

What is authentic about genuine science fiction, is that the science fiction writer should not stop with just saying: Well, the plot needs this to happen, therefore I'll just do it and I'll invent an excuse for it being able to be done. Proper science fiction ought to require people to begin to explore the consequences of what they've invented. And thus, I think that science fiction is, in a real sense, capable of being scientific. Not in the sense that it can foresee the future of science, but it can adopt a kind of variation of the scientific method itself, it does feel compelled to explore the consequences of hypotheses and the way things fit together.

Brian Stableford

A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.

Theodore Sturgeon

The difference is that in fantasy, you write about things you believe to be impossible, while in science fiction you write about stuff that hasn't been disproved. Everything else is window-dressing.

Lawrence Watt-Evans