Arthur C. Clarke Quotes About Science Fiction

Quotes about: Science Fiction

• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Technology, Possible And Impossible

  Letter to the editor, Science, 19 Jan. 1968.

• One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Pain, Future, Science

  "The Making of Kubrick's 2001". Book by Jerome Agel, 1970.

• There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Real, Men, Thinking

• Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Political, Fiction

  "The Making of Kubrick's 2001". Book by Jerome Agel, 1970.

• Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than not, it tries to prevent the future.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Trying, Fiction, Science Fiction

• Much blood has also been spilled on the carpet in attempts to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy. I have suggested an operational definition: science fiction is something that COULD happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that COULDN'T happen - though often you only wish that it could.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Blood, Wish, Fiction

  Arthur C. Clarke (2012). “The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke: History Lesson”, p.6, RosettaBooks

• In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Book, Dedication, Three

• 'The Devil in the Dark' impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Fear, Dark, Ideas

• Science fiction does not attempt to predict. It extrapolates. It just says, "What if?" not what will be? Because you can never predict what will happen, particularly in politics and economics. You can to some extent predict in the technological sphere - flying, space travel, but even there we missed badly on some things, like computers. No one imagined the incredible impact of computers, even though robot brains of various kinds but the idea that one day every house would have a computer in every room and that one day we'd have computers built into our clothing, nobody ever thought of that.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  House, Flying, What If

  Source: www.salon.com

• To be a science fiction writer you must be interested in the future and you must feel that the future will be different and hopefully better than the present. Although I know that most - that many science fiction writings have been anti-utopias. And the reason for that is that it's much easier and more exciting to write about a really nasty future than a - placid, peaceful one.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Writing, Peaceful, Different

  Source: www.salon.com

• The success of a science fiction writer is if he can write a good read.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Writing, Science Fiction

  Source: www.salon.com

• A precondition for being a science fiction writer other than an interest in the future is that, an interest - at least an understanding of science, not necessarily a science degree but you must have a feeling for the science and its possibilities and its impossibilities, otherwise you're writing fantasy. Now, fantasy is also fine, but there is a distinction, although no one's ever been able to say just where the dividing lines come.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Writing, Understanding, Feelings

  Source: www.salon.com

• Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it.
  Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
  The only place success comes before work is a dictionary
  Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Wish, Detectives, Fiction

• Attempting to define science fiction is an undertaking almost as difficult, though not so popular, as trying to define pornography... In both pornography and SF, the problem lies in knowing exactly where to draw the line.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Lying, Knowing, Trying

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