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The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.


Vernor Vinge

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As Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve thei...
STEPHEN HAWKING I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers deal...
WALTER MOSLEY I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing ...
WALTER MOSLEY I love science fiction. I always have, ever since I was a kid. I love a lot of science fiction write...
TAHMOH PENIKETT Print science fiction writers often do consulting for government bodies.
ROBERT J. SAWYER Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevi...
ISAAC ASIMOV Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevit...
ISAAC ASIMOV Science fiction writers aren't fortune tellers. Fortune tellers are fakes.
WILLIAM GIBSON Science fiction writers missed the most salient feature of our modern era: the Internet.
JACK MCDEVITT I can list on one hand the famous science fiction writers I never met.
ROBERT SILVERBERG Creative non-fiction is such a liberating genre because it allows the non-fiction writer, whether he...
LEE GUTKIND The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers.
SHERI S. TEPPER In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nob...
NANCY KRESS It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'...
TERRY PRATCHETT Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the histo...
RAY BRADBURY There's always been a little bit of tension between the writers of science fiction literature an...
JOHN SCALZI When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to...
EDWARD HIRSCH Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens.
RUDY RUCKER Technically and logically speaking, actual Victorian science fiction writers cannot be dubbed 's...
PAUL DI FILIPPO The real origin of science fiction lay in the seventeenth-century novels of exploration in fabulous ...
PHILIP K. DICK There were four major 20th-century science fiction writers: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A...
ROBERT J. SAWYER By definition, fiction writers lie for a living.
JANETTE RALLISON Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science...
PHILIP K. DICK All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fert...
ALAN LIGHTMAN Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about sci...
PHILIP K. DICK The 1970s were so wonderful for women writers. There were all these women, and they were seen as doi...
LISA TUTTLE Futurism today is led by science-fiction writers, by sociologists, by historians. Now, I have nothin...
MICHIO KAKU Just like science, there must be other kinds of sensations which haven't yet been felt by the human ...
TOBA BETA In really, really good science fiction, the line between the science and the fiction is blurry.
DAMON LINDELOF The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than rea...
JACQUES BARZUN We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadl...
VERNOR VINGE Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.
VERNOR VINGE IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its develope...
VERNOR VINGE How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?
VERNOR VINGE Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do...
VERNOR VINGE But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in som...
VERNOR VINGE When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI proj...
VERNOR VINGE In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algor...
VERNOR VINGE The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.
VERNOR VINGE I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Eart...
VERNOR VINGE And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I we...
VERNOR VINGE When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that ...
VERNOR VINGE The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of hum...
VERNOR VINGE Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and ...
VERNOR VINGE Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.
VERNOR VINGE It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.
VERNOR VINGE I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profo...
VERNOR VINGE The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage...
VERNOR VINGE But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.
VERNOR VINGE Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.
VERNOR VINGE Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.
VERNOR VINGE I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequ...
VERNOR VINGE I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.
VERNOR VINGE Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.
VERNOR VINGE Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only f...
VERNOR VINGE Here we begin frank speculation. And since we are speculating, we'll use those powerful pseudo-laws,...
VERNOR VINGE Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.
VERNOR VINGE He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daf...
VERNOR VINGE Though his invention worked superbly [...] his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end.
VERNOR VINGE Ty or Ra or Thect
VERNOR VINGE Ravna became a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased.
VERNOR VINGE Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in...
WILLIAM C. SAMPLES To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul...
NAWAL EL SAADAWI Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
W. EUGENE SMITH Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
EUGENE W. SMITH Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
W EUGENE SMITH Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is ficti...
JEAN M. AUEL I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it...
JAMES CAMERON The mysteriousness and mystique of space is such, that science fiction attempts to tantalize you by ...
WILLIAM SHATNER Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to b...
WALTER KIRN I read a lot of science fiction and biography - these are my two favorite genres. My favorite scienc...
BRAD FELD Maybe the search for life shouldn't restrict attention to planets like Earth. Science fiction wr...
MARTIN REES Just like science,
there must be other kinds of sensations
which haven't yet been felt TOBA BETA I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
JACK VANCE The '70s was a decade that was crammed with prominent women science fiction writers, and a lot o...
ANN LECKIE I read pretty eclectically - fiction, non-fiction, and poetry - and I've been inspired and influ...
BARRY EISLER Writers are very much undervalued in the creative process.
RACHEL WARD The chief difference between horror fans and science fiction fans lies in why they won't walk backwa...
AARON ALLSTON Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybo...
FR Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybo...
FREDERIC BASTIAT Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybo...
FREDERIC BASTIAT Science/horror/Non-Fiction/Technology/Music/Games/Space... these are the subjects of future. The oth...
DEYTH BANGER Bradbury would have said his plots are myths and metaphors that tell stories about the human conditi...
SAM WELLER I want to be the Cecil B. DeMille of science fiction.
STEVEN SPIELBERG I can't invent stuff, but the techniques fiction writers use to create character and suspense can al...
TRACY KIDDER I don't think four science- fiction shows are going to survive, but a couple probably will.
DAVID GOYER Well you can't believe everything you read. After all, by definition, fiction writers lie for a livi...
JANETTE RALLISON Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that.
MARGARET ATWOOD I started in this racket in the early '70s, and when I was president of the Science Fiction Writ...
JERRY POURNELLE I'd always wanted the show to be more reality based science fiction, something along the lines o...
GIL GERARD Labels like 'Chinese Science Fiction' or 'Western Science Fiction' summarize a vast ...
KEN LIU Science fiction is a unique literature. Science fiction is the first literature that says, 'Tomo...
DAVID GERROLD The entire Internet, as well as the types of devices represented by the desktop computer, the laptop...
PAUL DI FILIPPO The 'science' in 'science fiction' isn't just physics and engineering. It can al...
ANN LECKIE From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as...
GARRY DISHER Questions are fiction, and answers are anything from more fiction to science-fiction.
SAUL STEINBERG Art imitates life, but science fiction informs us about what form it will take.
ALAN JOSHUA A good scenario doesn't make a good science fiction story - but it's a setting within which ...
JAMAIS CASCIO I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its recor...
WILLIAM GIBSON I love science fiction.
PAM GRIER

More Vernor Vinge

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadl...
VERNOR VINGE Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.
VERNOR VINGE IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its develope...
VERNOR VINGE How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?
VERNOR VINGE Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do...
VERNOR VINGE But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in som...
VERNOR VINGE When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI proj...
VERNOR VINGE In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algor...
VERNOR VINGE The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.
VERNOR VINGE I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Eart...
VERNOR VINGE And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I we...
VERNOR VINGE When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that ...
VERNOR VINGE The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of hum...
VERNOR VINGE Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and ...
VERNOR VINGE Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.
VERNOR VINGE It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.
VERNOR VINGE I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profo...
VERNOR VINGE The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage...
VERNOR VINGE But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.
VERNOR VINGE Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.
VERNOR VINGE Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.
VERNOR VINGE I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequ...
VERNOR VINGE I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.
VERNOR VINGE Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.
VERNOR VINGE Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only f...
VERNOR VINGE Here we begin frank speculation. And since we are speculating, we'll use those powerful pseudo-laws,...
VERNOR VINGE Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.
VERNOR VINGE He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daf...
VERNOR VINGE Though his invention worked superbly [...] his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end.
VERNOR VINGE Ty or Ra or Thect
VERNOR VINGE Ravna became a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased.
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