science-fiction

So is this being in love? I stay with the moment, waiting to find out, the space between us fluctuating with uncertainty. The only thing I am sure of is that each time his lips leave mine they are right back again.

All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.

The seeking of a mate shall be undertaken with due preparation and care. A life-bond should never be contemplated as a light thing--unlike a legal union or sanctified joining, the sealing of souls CANNOT be severed. When a mate is SOULBOUND to another--LIFEMATED, as some have come to regard it--a mystery is engaged. In one aspect mystical, the lifemating process is the most sublime endeavor that a Refarian may assume. Once formed, the bond must be ever cherished and nurtured by the process of lifelong rigor.

A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.

You barbarians!' he yelled. 'I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until...until you've had enough.'Ford was running after him. Very very fast.'And then I will do it again!' yelled Arthur, 'And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!

The Walker towered over him like a half-built skyscraper with a bad attitude. Its bulbous silver head was home to so many weapons that Nick couldn't even count them. He couldn't even name half of them.

I can't go back," said Towser. "Nor I," said Fowler. "They would turn me back into a dog," said Towser. "And me," said Fowler, "back into a man.

Though often scoffed at by __erious_ writers, science fiction worms its way into our cultural psyche in interesting ways, and not just as predictors of technology. Many of these writers translate the __sms of our times into imagined futures populated with characters coping with the consequences.

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even.

I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.

The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future - indeed Schrödinger most famous thought experiment goes to show that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted - but to describe reality, the present world.Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

I am constantly amazed by how much stranger science is than science fiction

I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base.And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding.

When all else fails, use the pen.EMW

The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine.Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control.Quellcrest FalconerEthics on the Precipice

I didn't wait for Luck. I raced after it with a truck.

Conquest is made from the ashes of one's enemies.

Can't I just say it's magic? - Charlie Blue