Greg Bear
Why do we capital-N Nerds love Mars so much? Because it's beautiful, it's tough, it's buried in our mythic, childhood memories. It's covered with human triumphs but also with sad stories of failure.Collection: Failure
Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.Collection: Friendship
It's been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!
Working in Isaac's universe was more of a treat than a challenge.
Of all the planets apart from Earth in our solar system, Mars is the most hospitable. Yeah. Right. Better keep my visit short. And yet, despite the discomfort, the danger, I love it here. I love coming back for these imaginary vacations. The sights are amazing.
We're told another large-scale terrorist attack is inevitable by those people who have committed so many resources to preventing it. They likely know what they're talking about.
For years, even before 9/11, I've been trying to warn that the threat from amateur biolabs will ultimately turn out to be far more troublesome than leakage from military labs - perhaps even more costly and deadly than nuclear terrorism.
It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.
Science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.
Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.Collection: Strong
All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile.Collection: Nice
There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds.Collection: War
To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat.Collection: Ignorance
The price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.Collection: Philosophy
When all hopes are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.Collection: Reality
Having one's eyes opened doesn't make one grateful.Collection: Grateful
Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.Collection: Self
Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.Collection: Spiritual
Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.Collection: Apocalypse
Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches.Collection: Stars
Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten.It was in the blood, the flesh,And now it is forever.Collection: Blood
Sometimes the problem outshines the pain.Collection: Pain
But to fight something, you really have to try to understand its motivations—particularly when the something you’re fighting holds most of the cards, the deck is stacked against you, and the whole gambling hall is on fire and filled with thugs.Collection: Motivation
Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization.Collection: Believe
We may exist in all universes, but 'hear' only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs.Collection: Song
There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.Collection: Fun
I sometimes think we deserve to die, we're all so goddamned stupid.Collection: Stupid
You deserve whoever governs you ... Everyone is responsible for the actions of their leaders.Collection: Leader
Man is the poet who kills, Woman the angel who eats.Collection: Angel
To translate kinesics or paralinguistic messages into words is likely to introduce gross falsification due not merely to the human propensity for trying to falsify statements about "feelings" and relationship and to the distortions which arise whenever the products of one system of coding are dissected onto the premises of another, but especially to the fact that all such translation must give to the more or less unconscious and involuntary message the appearance of conscious intent.Collection: Giving
Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don't understand everything.Collection: Fusion
All things will be ambiguous, for this is the curse of wisdom.Collection: Curse
Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.Collection: Grief