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We hope it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction [like Richard Henry Horne’s ‘‘The Poor Artist’’], as we believe such books likely to fulfil a good purpose, and create an interest, where, unhappily, science alone might fail. [Thomas] Campbell says, that ‘‘Fiction in Poetry is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanting resemblance.’’ Now this applies especially to Science-Fiction, in which the revealed truths of Science may be given, interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be poetical and true—thus circulating a knowledge of the Poetry of Science, clothed in a garb of the Poetry of life.

”

—William Wilson, A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject, chapter 10 (1851). This is the first recorded use of the term science fiction in history.^[1]

^ Westfahl, Gary. Science Fiction Quotations. Yale University Press. 2005.

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The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self. We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?

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—Greg Bear (b.1951), "Introduction to 'Plague of Conscience'", The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002).

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I hate the whole ubermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.

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—David Brin (b.1950), Interview, Locus (March 1997).[1]

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Remember that Jules Verne was a sort of Shakespeare of science fiction, and we would feel derelict if we did not give his stories in our columns.

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—T. O'Conor Sloane (1851–1940), "Discussions" Amazing Stories (January 1927). This quote is notable for being the first "modern use" of the term science fiction.^[1]

^ Westfahl, Gary. Science Fiction Quotations. Yale University Press. 2005.

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Nothing is deader than yesterday's science-fiction.

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—Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008), The Sands of Mars (1951).

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Sci-fi can be succinctly defined as speculation, whether based on established scientific facts or on logical pseudo-facts consistent with the framework of the fiction in question, involving smelly green pimply aliens furiously raping or eating, or both, beautiful naked bare-breasted chicks, covering them in slime, red, oozing, living slime, dribbling from every horrific orifice, squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the sensuous velvety skin of the writhing sweating slave-girls, their bodies cut and bruised by knotted whips brandished by giant blond vast-biceped androids called Simon, and written in the Gothic mode.

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—Peter Nicholls (b.1939), True Rat 7 (1976).

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Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making. The whole process of science is wildly under-represented in science fiction because it's not easy to write about. There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys—it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not.

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—Kim Stanley Robinson (b. 1952), Interview, Locus (September 1997).[2]

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The "hard" science-fiction writers are the ones who try to write specific stories about all that technology may do for us. More and more, these writers felt an opaque wall across the future. Once, they could put such fantasies millions of years in the future. Now they saw that their most diligent extrapolations resulted in the unknowable...soon.

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—Vernor Vinge (b.1944), "The Coming Technological Singularity" (1993).

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Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected quote/9

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All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.

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—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956), Zuleika Dobson (1911).

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The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

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—Lionel Trilling (1905-1975), The Liberal Imagination (1950).

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It is easy to imagine fantasy as physical and myth as real. We do it almost every moment. We do this as we dream, as we think, and as we cope with the world about us. But these worlds of fantasy that we form into the solid things around us are the source of our discontent. They inspire our search to find ourselves.

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—Evan Harris Walker (1935-2006), The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life (2000).

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Plausibility, as the necessary brake and control element, has been our most essential guide.

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—Harold C. Deutsch (1904-1995), Introduction, What If? Strategic Alternatives of WWII (December 1997).

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Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected quote/13

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It is easy to argue persuasively the truism that the lessons of history are best derived from what actually happened, rather than from what nearly happened. It should be added, however, that what happened becomes more fully comprehensible in the light of the contending forces that existed at moments of decision. Understanding of the total historical setting is bound to contribute to a clearer view of the actual course of affairs.

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—Harold C. Deutsch (1904-1995), Introduction, What If? Strategic Alternatives of WWII (December 1997).

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[Alternate history] is the very essence of what science fiction is all about.

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—Harry Harrison (b.1925), "The Time of the Other: Alternate History and the Conquest of America" in Strange Horizons (2002).

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Portal:Speculative fiction/Selected quote/15

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Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.

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—Brian Aldiss (b.1925), Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction (1973).

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Science-fiction is the law-abiding citizen of imaginative literature, obeying the rules, be they physical, social, or psychological, keeping regular hours, eating punctual meals; predictable, certain, sure. Fantasy, on the other hand, is criminal. Each fantasy assaults and breaks a particular law; the crime being hidden by the author's felicitous thought and style which cover the body before blood is seen. Science-fiction works hand-in-glove with the universe. Fantasy cracks it down the middle, turns it wrong-side-out, dissolves it to invisibility, walks men through its walls, and fetches incredible circuses to town with sea-serpent, medusa, and chimera displacing zebra, ape, and armadillo. Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off.

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—Ray Bradbury (1920–2012), "Introduction" in The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories (1956).

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