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A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books but of course they never ...more

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Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what people actually do ...more

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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.

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The only social change presented by most SF has been towards authoritarianism, the domination of ignorant masses by a powerful elite—sometimes present...more

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Almost everything carried to its logical extreme becomes either depressing or carcinogenic.

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[H.G. Wells said] that his method was "to trick his reader into an unwary concession to some plausible assumption and get on with his story while the ...more

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I know that I am going to meet a personal variation on reality; a partial view of reality. But I know also that by that partiality, that distancing fr...more

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The constrained body knows and values the freedom of the mind.

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Was he leaving home, or going home?

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To use the enemy's weapon is to play the enemy's game...speak the truth and hear the truth.

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Fish and visitors stink after three days.

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I go on writing in both respectable and despised genres because I respect them all, rejoice in their differences, and reject only the prejudice and ig...more

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Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something mu...more

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I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.

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The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regar...more