science-fiction

Powell__ face appeared on screen. __t__ true, the doomsday crowd is a little crazy,_ she said, looking thoughtful. __ut that doesn__ mean they__e wrong.

Well, if a Little Fuzzy finds a door open, I__ like to know why he shouldn__ come in and look around.

Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly.'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I__ too skeptical, but I can__ take it too seriously.'Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.'Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children__ bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You__e probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I__ hate to want to take that seriously.'("The Venus Hunters")

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

_ No SF novel ever won the Booker, growls a prowling clansman on his way into the SF Café.The librarian swings a shotgun from inside her longcoat, blasts the bullshit axiom from the air. Screw the Booker, she thinks. She__ rather have a hookah.

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness.

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

Secrets, however long they are kept, usually still manage to be brought to light. The best you can hope for is that you__l be in control of when a secret gets out, not if it does._ -Melody in CHIMERA-

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 and disappeared into the void.-Narrator, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project

People who couldn't imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn't need to imagine, because they already were. She'd said it was always a mistake, to believe those people were different, special, infected with something that was inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally other. Which reminded her of what her mother had said about Corbell Picket. That evil wasn't glamorous, but just the result of ordinary half-assed badness, high school badness, given enough room, however that might happen, to become its bigger self. Bigger, with more horrible results, but never more than the cumulative weight of ordinary human baseness.

1620Each quantum event, each of the trillions of times reality__ particles interact with each other every instant, is like a note that rings and resonates throughout the great bell of creation. And the sound of the ringing propagates instantaneously, everywhere at once, interconnecting all things. This is a truth of our universe. It is a mystical truth, that reality at its deepest level is an undivided wholeness.~ David Zindell

Humans have been doin_ awful things to each other throughout history. Humanity__ not as great as you make it out to be. I do what needs to be done, and that__ that. We__e about to go to war, Earl. There ain__ no humanity in war.

__t__ not Sci-Fi, we insist, It__ SF.Every time you say that a Venusian Slime Boy dies, you know.

Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. __ust out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you__e ever done?___t wouldn__ be fair to rank them._ Caleb gunned the engine.

And she laughed, a full octave, descending from high C like chimes.

Dale__ face is older. Just a little. Around the eyes and mouth. The skin of his neck. The back of his hands. Maybe not, he thinks, turning on the faucet, letting the water grow warm then hot. He begins shaving his lubricated chin and cheeks. Chrysalis hibernation slows things down, but it doesn't stop them, not all together, and he finds himself to currently resemble something between a derelict and a college student, neither one ringing particularly desirable in his present mood.

When we decided to have Julie, I couldn__ carry her. We sat down and the hard numbers stared back at us. I made twice as much as Fern. We wouldn__ have been able to feed ourselves, let alone another mouth, if I__ been the one to hold her. And so we both went for the operation, and they took eggs from the two of us and made them one. And then I squeezed Fern__ hand when she went into the theatre, and when she came out again they__ put it inside her. And sheltered by her body, the one cell that was us divided and became two, and then three, and then four hundred million, and then they divided into parts. Lungs, heart, brain, mouth. And finally, when she was ready, Julie divided from Fern and there were three of us.

I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.