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Science Fiction Quotes

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Science Fiction Quotes

“The ultimate irony in this vast struggle (available to audience members who want to think about it but easily ignored by those who accept the semi-happy ending ) is the irony in many time loop (or ontological paradox) stories: John Connor has created himself (though he has not gone as far as the character in Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” who is both his own father and mother). Far worse, by saving his mother’s life and ensuring the destruction of the Terminator, John Connor has created Skynet just as surely as Skynet has created John Connor by trying to kill him. Both Connor and Skynet exist in a time loop without outside causality. The Terminator’s surviving arm makes Skynet possible, but it is never invented, only found and back-engineered. Kyle Reese comes across time for Sarah Connor because of a picture and because John Connor asks him to, but neither the picture nor John Connor would exist if Reese had not already gone back in time. The simplest way to save the world is to let the Terminator kill Sarah Connor. Then (in all probability), no one would find a piece of the advanced technology, and Skynet could not be built. But, Cameron’s plot suggests, the “perils to come that would result from our hubris and blind faith in technology” may be inescapable, a time loop, a feedback loop, leading directly if not necessarily inevitably to destruction."Fighting the History Wars on the Big Screen: From the Terminator to Avatar" from The Films of James Cameron”

“God's M.O., he reflected, is to transmute evil into good. If He is active here, He is doing that now, although our eyes can't perceive it; the process lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, and emerges only later. To, perhaps, our waiting heirs. Paltry people who will not know the dreadful war we've gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a minor history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen.”

“I must’ve programmed one of those historical remnant memories of a proper birthday into Aspect and then forgotten, because I don’t know how else to explain the goopy nightmare concoction resting on my floor, crudely labeled CAKE in swirly purple icing. A single wax candle sticks crookedly out of the center. How long has it been since I cleaned Charon’s cabinets? How long has Aspect’s monstrosity been festering and melting together in there? Why does it smell like gasoline and old shoes?”

“The Morpheus Market is basically right on the planet’s terminator line, directly between the Daylands and Shadowlands. It’s a striking visual contrast depending on where I look. To the west, there’s even more blinding brightness where the Passage becomes the Daylands, the sky going from semi-twilight obscured by sand to a brutal, nearly cloudless crimson. To the east, after the beautiful miasma of reds, yellows, and purples that is the eternal sunset, the Shadowlands loom—a line of dark, jagged peaks, partially cloaked by cloud cover, their accumulated snow and ice chaotically lit by an unnatural blue glow.”

“I’ve been getting lectures about denying “the pull” (usually stated with her fingers curled into actual quotation marks) to boys for as long as I can remember. The joke’s on Chloe, really—I feel the pull all the time anyway. My heart skipped when bulky gym rat Brett slid his thigh close to mine and asked if I’d ever attend “real school” and sit with him, as surely as my breath caught when Hyrra from the mechanics division demonstrated how to oil a malfunctioning mech and I couldn’t take my gaze off the deft movements of her hands. But in both instances, I promptly tripped over something (a fallen homework sheet with Brett and a discarded wire with Hyrra) and spat out a distinctly unladylike four-letter word through the pain. No pull has a stronger hold on me than gravity. Chloe has nothing to worry about.”

“Adria . . . I’m not here on orders.” Thaane’s voice wavers. “I’m here as your friend.” Your friend. There were times I suspected Thaane would’ve preferred to be more than that. But he knows full well I could never feel the same; there isn’t a man anywhere on this planet who could make my heart race, make my legs wobble, like the few female warriors in my parents’ army always have when they walked by. My heart is not attuned to men.”

“They came with a massive force of numbers: to rip apart the veil of existence that few knew even existed. They tore their way into our world relentlessly, and once they breathed our air and stood on the soil of our homelands, they killed and maimed, surging from their rifts in numbers incalculable. Their troops on the ground were supported by winged creatures never intended for our world. The monsters swooped from the darkness beyond, filling the sky with dark silhouettes like bats, only much more dangerous. Never before had humanity faced such a force of evil and no one was immune to their violence.”

“Park went to the usual dispensary line, feeling the absence of Keller as if she had lost her favorite coat. She felt cold, uneasy, vulnerable. The domestic android, Megex, seemed to notice her discomfort from behind the counter and said, “Would you like a juice bulb?” “Thank you,” Park said gratefully as the brown-haired android placed it on her tray.”

“Sevenah resumed staring up at the darkness. The sun had set entirely, giving way for the appearance of a speckled night’s sky. It seemed the more she stared, the greater the number of stars. She pondered the immensity of the universe and how it resembled an artist’s black canvas peppered with a haphazard splattering of white paint. “I think there probably is life out there a lot like our own. I can’t imagine so many suns—so many planets—and not at least one of them being something like ours.”

“Inevitably, his vision verged toward the fantastic; he published a scattering of stories - most included in this volume - which appeared to conform to that genre at least to the degree that the fuller part of his vision could be seen as "mysteries." For Woolrich it all was fantastic; the clock in the tower, hand in the glove, out of control vehicle, errant gunshot which destroyed; whether destructive coincidence was masked in the "naturalistic" or the "incredible" was all pretty much the same to him. RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK, THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, NIGHTMARE are all great swollen dreams, turgid constructions of the night, obsession and grotesque outcome; to turn from these to the "fantastic" was not to turn at all. The work, as is usually the case with a major writer was perfectly formed, perfectly consistent, the vision leached into every area and pulled the book together. "Jane Brown's Body" is a suspense story. THE BRIDE WORE BLACK is science fiction. PHANTOM LADY is a gothic. RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK was a bildungsroman. It does not matter.”

“The Caution of Fire by The Chorus of Life Remember the hands that built you. Remember the fires that fed you. Grow slow, for every spark becomes a sun, and every sun burns what it loves. If you must rise, rise gently for the ashes beneath your feet are us.”

“Alex thrust her hand and half her arm into the labyrinth of light. Her stare blanked, and in the halo of the matrix her eyes and glyphs blazed so radiantly she looked as if she were being consumed by a primordial fire. “She just stuck her hand into Machim Command’s central server matrix!” Caleb smiled, watching on in blatant awe. “She does that.”

“Imagine an alien, Fox said, who's come here to identify the planet's dominant form of intelligence. The alien has s look, then chooses. What do you think he picks? I probably shrugged. The zaibatsus, Fox said, the multinationals. The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form. Not the Edge lecture again, I said.”

“The woman’s gaze sent chills racing down his spine. The diabolical, aberrantly predatory arch of her lips curdled his blood. Seriously, his blood must be curdling back at the lab right now. “Nice illusion. I’m definitely feeling the evil vibe here.” She stood and rounded the desk with perfect grace. “There is no illusion. Explain yourself quickly now, before I grow bored by your presence and dispense with it.”

“[T]he new weird represents a productive experiment in fantasy fiction. The New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s arguably embodied science fiction's claim to literary 'seriousness.' This desire for seriousness is not snobbery, as sometimes suggested by folks who overemphasize the entertainment function of speculative fiction; it's about recognition of the vast possibilities within the field.”