On Literature: On History (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"A modern branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of dealing with the infinitely small, can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion, which used to appear insoluble. This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing with problems of motion, admits the conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when dealing with separate elements of motion instead of examining continuous motion. In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable human wills, is continuous. To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history." (Lev N Tolstoy, "War and Peace", 1867)

"Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history." (Lev N Tolstoy, "War and Peace", 1867)

"The entire history of mankind, insofar as we know it, is the history of transition from nomadic to increasingly settled forms of existence. And does it not follow that the most settled form (ours) is at the same time the most perfect (ours)?" (Yevgeny Zamiatin, "We", 1924)

"At least half of mankind [...] still makes an unconscious equation in its thinking, and assumes that change - any sort of change - is identical with progress. It is not so; and any student of the course of evolutionary history on Terra could tell you of change which has been regressive, change which has led to an ultimately fatal specialization, change which has been overadaptation to an ecological niche which no longer existed, or did not yet exist." (Margaret St. Clair, "Agent of the Unknown", 1952)

"The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science." (Rachel Carson, [acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction] 1952) 

"No culture as yet has actually forgotten history because no culture has really possessed more than fragments of it." (Edgar Pangborn, "Mount Charity", 1971)

"What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what ‘the stars foretell,’ avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable ‘verdict of history', - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!" (Robert A Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love", 1973)

"All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life - science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness", [introduction] 1976)

"Time is no longer a line along which history, past or future, lies neatly arranged, but a field of great mystery and complexity, in the contemplation of which the mind perceives an immense terror, and an indestructible hope." (Ursula K Le Guin, 1977)

"Myths are not fiction, but history seen with a poet’s eyes and recounted in a poet’s terms." (Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom, "The Jesus Incident", 1979)

"History has limited use, she knew, since memory distorts." (Suzy M Charnas, "The Unicorn Tapestry’", 1980)

"History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe." (Frank Herbert, "God Emperor of Dune", 1984)

"As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day." (Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid’s Tale", 1986)

"History too has an inertia. In the four dimensions of spacetime, particles (or events) have directionality; mathematicians, trying to show this, draw what they call 'world lines' on graphs. In human affairs, individual world lines form a thick tangle, curling out of the darkness of prehistory and stretching through time: a cable the size of Earth itself, spiraling round the sun on a long curved course. That cable of tangled world lines is history. Seeing where it has been, it is clear where it is going - it is a matter of simple extrapolation." (Kim S Robinson, "Red Mars", 1992)

"History has no laws, and all patterns that we find there are useful illusions." (Orson Scott Card, "Children of the Mind", 1996)

"There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables." (Chuck Palahniuk, "Survivor", 1999)

"You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history." (Iain Banks, "The Steep Approach to Garbadale", 2007)

"A simple proof. If time travel is - or ever will be - possible, where are the time travelers? Every moment of history should be mobbed with them, so where are they?" (Peter Clines, "The End of the Experiment", [in J W Schnarrv (ed), "Timelines"] 2010)

"Culture is acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit." (Matthew Arnold)

On Literature: On Surfaces (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"In Science, all tends to stir, to change, to form fresh surfaces. All denies, destroys, creates, replaces all. What was ground yesterday is put into the hopper again today. The colossal machine, Science, never rests. It is never satisfied; it is insatiable for improvement, of which the absolute knows nothing." (Victor Hugo, "William Shakespeare", 1864)

"Phenomena may well be suspected of anything, are capable of anything. Hypothesis proclaims the infinite; that is what gives hypothesis its greatness. Beneath the surface fact it seeks the real fact. It asks creation for her thoughts, and then for her second thoughts. The great scientific discoverers are those who hold nature suspect." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the Sea", 1866)

"Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all." (Thomas Mann,"The Magic Mountain", 1924)

"Escape, God how we all need escape from this tiny here. The need for it has motivated just about everything man has ever done in any direction other than that of the satisfaction of his physical appetites; it has led him along weird and wonderful pathways; it has led him into art and religion, ascetism Exploration and Adventure [sic] and astrology, dancing and drinking, poetry and insanity. All of these have been escapes because he has known only recently the true direction of escape - outward, into infinity and eternity, away from this little flat if rounded surface we’re born on and die on. This mote in the solar system, this atom in the galaxy." (Fredric Brown, "The Lights in the Sky Are Stars", 1953)

"A few moments earlier the water had seemed cool and inviting, but now had become a closed world, the barrier of the surface like a plane between two dimensions." (James G Ballard, "The Drowned World", 1962)

"The present, as every schoolboy knows, is only the surface of the space-time sea, and a living spacewhale can dive beneath this surface and sojourn in times past, can return, if it so desires, to the primordial moment when the cosmos was born." (Robert F Young, "Starscape with Frieze of Dreams", 1970)

"'It bedevils me sometimes why I am the only one to notice the analogy between historical geology and depth psychology', Terrence Burdock mused as they grew lightly profound around the campfire. 'The isostatic principle applies to the mind and the under-mind as well as it does to the surface and? undersurface of the earth. The mind has its erosions and weatherings going on along with its deposits and accumulations. It also has its upthrusts and its stresses. It floats on a similar magma. In extreme cases it has its volcanic eruptions and its mountain building.'" (Raphael A Lafferty, "Continued on Next Rock", 1970)

On Literature: On Information (From Fiction to Science-Fiction

"What is called science today consists of a haphazard heap of information, united by nothing, often utterly unnecessary, and not only failing to present one unquestionable truth, but as often as not containing the grossest errors, today put forward as truths, and tomorrow overthrown." (Leo Tolstoy, "What Is Art?", 1897)

"The more complex a civilization, the more vital to its existence is the maintenance of the flow of information; hence the more vulnerable it becomes to any disturbance in that flow." (Stanislaw Lem, "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub", 1961)

"A scientist can not be measured quantitatively by the number of degrees or the accumulation of information. A true scientist should have a measure of courage to correct error and seek truth - no matter how painful. The alternative is more painful. To build error upon error is to drift into dogmas, metaphysics, science fiction, and mythology." (Alexander Wilf, "Origin and Destiny of the Moral Species", 1969)

"When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep". (Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness", 1969)

"You can understand why a system would seek information - but why in hell does it offer information? Why do we strive to be understood? Why is a refusal to accept communication so painful?" (James Tiptree Jr, "Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home", 1973)

"Any information system of sufficient complexity will inevitably become infected with viruses - viruses generated from within itself." (Neal Stephenson, "Snow Crash", 1992)

"He had long since learned that when something unusual was going on, he would often find out more information faster by waiting than by asking." (Orson Scott Card, "First Meetings in Ender's Universe", 2002)

"Human evolution is driven by community needs […]. How is that possible, since genetic information is passed only by and to individuals?" (Orson Scott Card, "First Meetings in Ender's Universe", 2002)

"Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code." (Neal Stephenson, "Snow Crash", 2003)

"[…] that’s what science was - the sharing of information, the pooling of knowledge. (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"The absence of information is information.” (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"The process of thinking itself requires us to view the universe in the direction of entropy, since an abstraction always involves information loss, since symbols 'abstract' complexity from observed objects." (John C Wright, "Awake in the Night Land", 2014)

On Literature: On Wisdom (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public." (Samuel Johnson [in Hesther L Piozzi’s "Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D", 1786])

"The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it." (Lev N Tolstoy, "War and Peace', 1867)

"Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know." (Lev N Tolstoy, "A Calendar of Wisdom", 1910)

"Oh, great, divinely bounding wisdom of walls and barriers! They are, perhaps, the greatest of man’s inventions. Man ceased to be a wild animal only when he built the first wall." (Yevgeny Zamiatin, "We", 1924)

"Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom." (Havelock Ellis, Impressions & Comments, 1930)

"There is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reason on the unforeseen." (Gilbert K Chesterton, "The Father Brown omnibus", 1951)

"Sometimes one must try anything, he decided. It is no disgrace. On the contrary, it is a sign of wisdom, of recognizing the situation." (Philip K Dick, "The Man in the High Castle", 1962)

"Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965

"These dwarfs amass knowledge as others do treasure; for this reason they are called Hoarders of the Absolute. Their wisdom lies in the fact that they collect knowledge but never use it." (Stanislaw Lem, "How Erg the Self-Inducing Slew a Paleface", 1965)

"If everything, everything were known, statistical estimates would be unnecessary. The science of probability gives mathematical expression to our ignorance, not to our wisdom." (Samuel R Delany, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", 1969)

"We take foul medicines to improve our health; so we must entertain foul thoughts on occasion, to strengthen wisdom." (Brian W Aldiss, "The Small Stones of Tu Fu", 1978)

"Science in the service of humanity is technology, but lack of wisdom may make the service harmful." (Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations", 1988)

"What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?" (Iain Banks, "Use of Weapons", 1990)

Viktor Schauberger - Collected Quotes

"In Nature all life is a question of the minutest, but extremely precisely graduated differences in the particular thermal motion within every single body, which continually changes in rhythm with the processes of pulsation. This unique law, which manifests itself throughout Nature's vastness and unity and expresses itself in every creature and organism, is the 'law of ceaseless cycles' that in every organism is linked to a certain time span and a particular tempo. The slightest disturbance of this harmony can lead to the most disastrous consequences for the major life forms. In order to preserve this state of equilibrium, it is vital that the characteristic inner temperature of each of the millions of micro-organisms contained in the macro-organisms be maintained." (Viktor Schauberger," Callum Coats: Water Wizard", 1934)

"This civilization is the work of man, who high-handedly and ignorant of the true workings of Nature, has created a world without meaning or foundation, which now threatens to destroy him, for through his behavior and his activities, he, who should be her master, has disturbed Nature's inherent unity." (Viktor Schauberger, "Callum Coats: Water Wizard", 1934)

"The true foundation of all culture is the knowledge and understanding of water. Water is the ur-substance or ur-cause of all creation and for this reason is the ur-original accumulator, which readily absorbs both earthly and cosmic substances and conveys them to the body in a purely objective form. This must be done in such a way that the ur-attributes will in no way be modified and that change as such can only first come about in the effect, which the organically correctly structured body mediates and imparts. For this reason a good spirit dwells in a healthy body. Conversely a body full of vitality can be created, maintained and further developed by healing the inhering spirit." (Viktor Schauberger, 1936)

"All motion consists of two components. One component serves inwardness (internalisation) and the other outwardness (dispersion). Both preconditions for motion regulate the eternal flow of metamorphosis (panta Rhei)." (Viktor Schauberger, "Callum Coats: Energy Evolution", Implosion Magazine No. 57, 2000)

"If we wish to influence our own life in a particular direction, which is constantly threatened by the danger of the emergence of alien life-forms, and protect it from deterioration, then we must either allow Nature to rule or, if we wish to intervene, we must first acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of life." (Viktor Schauberger, "Callum Coats: Energy Evolution", Implosion Magazine No. 86, 2000)

"We must look into unknown dimensions, into Nature, into that incalculable and imponderable life, whose carrier and mediator, the blood of the Earth that accompanies us steadfastly from the cradle to the grave, is water." (Viktor Schauberger, "Callum Coats: Energy Evolution", Implosion Magazine No. 103, 2000)

"Naturally moving water augments itself. It improves its quality and matures considerably. Its boiling and freezing points change, and wise Nature makes use of this phenomenon to raise water, without using pumping equipment, to the highest mountain peaks, to appear as mountain springs. This conception of raising water is not to be taken literally, since in this context it is concerned with the natural process of propagation and purification. This in turn helps towards the expansion of air by creating an air cover, which serves to develop a higher form of life." (Viktor Schauberger)

"Nothing falls entirely! Nothing dies away completely! Nothing can totally deprive another of its rights! On the contrary, the deeper the fall, the higher the reactive upswing!" (Viktor Schauberger, "Callum Coats: The Fertile Earth") 

"Our primeval Mother Earth is an organism that no science in the world can rationalize. Everything on her that crawls and flies is dependent upon her and all must hopelessly perish if that Earth dies that feeds us." (Viktor Schauberger)

On Literature: On Limits (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"The limit of man's knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination." (Charles Darwin, "Journal of Researches Into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle: Under the Command of Captain FitzRoy, R. N., from 1832-6", 1836)

"Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue." (Henry James, "The Art of Fiction", 1884)

"The function of man’s highest faculty, his reason, consists precisely of the continuous limitation of infinity, the breaking up of infinity into convenient, easily digestible portions - differentials. This is precisely what lends my field, mathematics, its divine beauty." (Yevgeny Zamiatin, "We", 1924)

"Man has natural three-dimensional limits, and he also has four-dimensional ones, considering time as an extension. When he reaches those limits, he ceases to grow and mature, and forms rigidly within the mold of those limiting walls. It is stasis, which is retrogression unless all else stands still as well. A man who reaches his limits is tending toward subhumanity. Only when he becomes superhuman in time and space can immortality become practical." (Henry Kuttner & C L Moore, "Time Enough", 1946)

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." (Arthur C Clarke, "Profiles of the Future", 1962)

"Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)

"Homo can truly be called sapiens when he practices his specialty of being unspecialized. His repeated attempts to freeze himself into an all-answering pattern or culture or ideology, or whatever he has named it, have repeatedly brought ruin. Give him the pragmatic business of making his living, and he will usually do rather well. He adapts, within broad limits." (Poul Anderson, "The Queen of Air and Darkness", 1971)

"It is tempting to wonder if our present universe, large as it is and complex though it seems, might not be merely the result of a very slight random increase in order over a very small portion of an unbelievably colossal universe which is virtually entirely in heat-death. Perhaps we are merely sliding down a gentle ripple that has been set up, accidently and very temporarily, in a quiet pond, and it is only the limitation of our own infinitesimal range of viewpoint in space and time that makes it seem to ourselves that we are hurtling down a cosmic waterfall of increasing entropy, a waterfall of colossal size and duration." (Isaac Asimov, 1976)

"If we assume the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent being, one that knows and can do absolutely everything, then to my own very limited self, it would seem that existence for it would be unbearable. Nothing to wonder about? Nothing to ponder over? Nothing to discover? Eternity in such a heaven would surely be indistinguishable from hell." (Isaac Asimov, "'X' Stands for Unknown", 1984)

"Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary." (Frank Herbert, "Chapterhouse: Dune", 1985)

"It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth." (Milan Kundera, "Encounter", 2009)

"Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called "other", which is simply another universe, another planet, another species." (Theodore Sturgeon)

On Intelligence: On Swarms (2010-)

"Is a discipline that deals with natural and artificial systems composed of many individuals that coordinate using decentralized control and self-organization. In particular, SI focuses on the collective behaviors that result from the local interactions of the individuals with each other and with their environment." (Elina Pacini et al, "Schedulers Based on Ant Colony Optimization for Parameter Sweep Experiments in Distributed Environments", 2013)

"Swarm intelligence illustrates the complex and holistic way in which the world operates. Order is created from chaos; patterns are revealed; and systems are free to work out their errors and problems at their own level. What natural systems can teach humanity is truly amazing." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

"Swarm intelligence (SI) is a branch of computational intelligence that discusses the collective behavior emerging within self-organizing societies of agents. SI was inspired by the observation of the collective behavior in societies in nature such as the movement of birds and fish. The collective behavior of such ecosystems, and their artificial counterpart of SI, is not encoded within the set of rules that determines the movement of each isolated agent, but it emerges through the interaction of multiple agents." (Maximos A Kaliakatsos-Papakostas et al, "Intelligent Music Composition", 2013) 

"In sharp contrast to the modus operandi of swarm dynamics, political bodies are ill-equipped to protect the integrity of their components and lack the collective wisdom for synchronization. Instead, highly layered command-based systems invade, institutionalize, and indoctrinate society with centralized directives, straitjacket bureaucracies, and self-serving officialdom. These systems hungrily feast on what others have created, cannibalizing other people’s resources like a tribe of pragmatic headhunters." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

"Swarm intelligence illustrates the complex and holistic way in which the world operates. Order is created from chaos; patterns are revealed; and systems are free to work out their errors and problems at their own level. What natural systems can teach humanity is truly amazing." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

"Ants exhibit a 'neuron-like' behavior insofar as inactive ants have a low propensity to become spontaneously active, but can become excited by other ants with whom they come into contact. [...] Conversely, ants are prone to lapse back into inactivity if their activation is not sufficiently reinforced, and even exhibit a short refractory period (similar to neurons) before they can be reactivated – a mechanism which keeps the swarm from getting permanently 'locked' into an excitatory state." (Georg Theiner & John Sutton, "The collaborative emergence of group cognition", 2014) 

"These nature-inspired algorithms gradually became more and more attractive and popular among the evolutionary computation research community, and together they were named swarm intelligence, which became the little brother of the major four evolutionary computation algorithms." (Yuhui Shi, "Emerging Research on Swarm Intelligence and Algorithm Optimization", Information Science Reference, 2014)

"These nature-inspired algorithms gradually became more and more attractive and popular among the evolutionary computation research community, and together they were named swarm intelligence, which became the little brother of the major four evolutionary computation algorithms." (Yuhui Shi, "Emerging Research on Swarm Intelligence and Algorithm Optimization", Information Science Reference, 2014)

"Collective intelligence of societies of biological (social animals) or artificial (robots, computer agents) individuals. In artificial intelligence, it gave rise to a computational paradigm based on decentralisation, self-organisation, local interactions, and collective emergent behaviours." (D T Pham & M Castellani, "The Bees Algorithm as a Biologically Inspired Optimisation Method", 2015)

"It is the field of artificial intelligence in which the population is in the form of agents which search in a parallel fashion with multiple initialization points. The swarm intelligence-based algorithms mimic the physical and natural processes for mathematical modeling of the optimization algorithm. They have the properties of information interchange and non-centralized control structure." (Sajad A Rather & P Shanthi Bala, "Analysis of Gravitation-Based Optimization Algorithms for Clustering and Classification", 2020)

"It is the discipline dealing with natural and artificial systems consisting of many individuals who coordinate through decentralized monitoring and self-organization." (Mehmet A Cifci, "Optimizing WSNs for CPS Using Machine Learning Techniques", 2021)

On Literature: On Fantasy (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

'Of all the fantastic ideas that belong to science fiction, the most remarkable - and, perhaps, the most fascinating - is that of time travel [...] Indeed, so fantastic a notion does it seem, and so many apparently obvious absurdities and bewildering paradoxes does it present, that some of the most imaginative students of science refuse to consider it as a practical proposition." (Idrisyn O Evans, "Can We Conquer Time?", Tales of Wonder, 1940)

"[Science fiction is] that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesised on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin. It is distinguished from pure fantasy by its need to achieve verisimilitude and win the 'willing suspension of disbelief' through scientific plausibility." (Kingsley Amis, "New Maps of Hell", 1960)

"Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible." (Rod Serling, "The Twilight Zone", "The Fugitive", 1962)

"In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes." (Carl Jung, "The practice of psychotherapy", 1966)

"Phrased rather too simply, science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities." (Miriam Allen deFord, "Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow", 1971))

"The catastrophe story, whoever may tell it, represents a constructive and positive act by the imagination rather than a negative one, an attempt to confront the terrifying void of a patently meaningless universe by challenging it at its own game. [. . .] Each one of these fantasies represents an arraignment of the finite, an attempt to dismantle the formal structure of time and space which the universe wraps around us at the moment we first achieve consciousness." (James G Ballard, "Cataclysms and Dooms" 1977)

"[...] science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be." (Orson Scott Card, "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy", 1990)

"Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem." (Michichio Kaku, Wired Magazine, 2003)

"Every so often I come up with a different definition of what science fiction and fantasy do, and I'm always looking for one that describes what they both do, rather than separating them. Currently I'm saying that one of the things they do is look at the effects of large-scale social change on both populations and individuals. Fantasy tends to look to the past, and science fiction to the future, but what is common to many of the stories is change: huge societal upheaval." (Nalo Hopkinson, "Nalo Hopkinson: Multiplicity", LocusMag, 2007)

"But if the general opinion of Mankind is optimistic then we're in for a period of extreme popularity for science fiction. If the general opinion is pessimistic, fantasy is going to hold its own." (David Eddings) 

"Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor." (China Miéville)

On Physicists (Unsourced)

"Chemistry has been termed by the physicist as the messy part of physics, but that is no reason why the physicists should be permitted to make a mess of chemistry when they invade it." (Frederick Soddy [attributed])

"Empirical evidence can never establish mathematical existence - nor can the mathematician's demand for existence be dismissed by the physicist as useless rigor. Only a mathematical existence proof can ensure that the mathematical description of a physical phenomenon is meaningful." (Richard Courant)

"Every physicist knows exactly what the first and the second law mean, but [...] no two physicists agree about them." (Clifford Truesdell)

"I believe that numbers and functions of Analysis are not the arbitrary result of our minds; I think that they exist outside of us, with the same character of necessity as the things of objective reality, and we meet them or discover them, and study them, as do the physicists, the chemists and the zoologists." (Charles Hermite)

"Nothing in physics seems so hopeful to as the idea that it is possible for a theory to have a high degree of symmetry was hidden from us in everyday life. The physicist's task is to find this deeper symmetry." (Steven Weinberg)

"Symmetry does mean something different for physicists than for members of the public. It means that an object or a theory does not change when you make some transformation - either rotating or moving it or doing something to the equations." (Lawrence M Krauss)

"The difference between mathematicians and physicists is that after physicists prove a big result they think it is fantastic but after mathematicians prove a big result they think it is trivial." (Lucien Szpiro)

"The universe of Eastern mysticism is an illusion, A physicist who attempts to link it with his own work has abandoned physics." (Stephen Hawking)

"There is no drawing the line between physics and metaphysics. If you examine every day facts at all closely, you are a physicist; but if you press your physics at all home, you become a metaphysician; if you press your metaphysics at all home, you are in a fog." (Samuel Butler)

"When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (Tony Rothman)

On Physicists (1940-1949)

"[…] there is probably less difference between the positions of a mathematician and of a physicist than is generally supposed, [...] the mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. This may seem a paradox, since it is the physicist who deals with the subject-matter usually described as 'real', but [...] [a physicist] is trying to correlate the incoherent body of crude fact confronting him with some definite and orderly scheme of abstract relations, the kind of scheme he can borrow only from mathematics." (Godfrey H Hardy, "A Mathematician's Apology", 1940)

"At the present time it is of course quite customary for physicists to trespass on chemical ground, for mathematicians to do excellent work in physics, and for physicists to develop new mathematical procedures […] Trespassing is one of the most successful techniques in science." (Wolfgang Köhler, "Dynamics in Psychology", 1940)

"Physicists who are trying to understand nature may work in many different fields and by many different methods; one may dig, one may sow, one may reap. But the final harvest will always be a sheaf of mathematical formulae. These will never describe nature itself, hut only our observations on nature. Our studies can never put us into contact with reality; we can never penetrate beyond the impressions that reality implants in our minds." (James H Jeans, "Physics and Philosophy", 1942)

"Although we can never devise a pictorial representation which shall be both true to nature and intelligible to our minds, we may still be able to make partial aspects of the truth comprehensible through pictorial representations or parables. As the whole truth does not admit of intelligible representation, every such pictorial representation or parable must fail somewhere. The physicist of the last generation was continually making pictorial representations and parables, and also making the mistake of treating the half-truths of pictorial representations and parables as literal truths." (James H Jeans, "Physics and Philosophy" 3rd Ed., 1943)

"Any good architect is by nature a physicist as a matter of fact, but as a matter of reality, as things are, he must be a philosopher and a physician." (Frank L Wright, "Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography", 1943)

"In time they [physicists] hoped to devise a model which would reproduce all the phenomena of physics, and so make it possible to predict them all. […] To-day we not only have no perfect model, but we know that it is of no use to search for one - it could have no intelligible meaning for us. For we have found out that nature does not function in a way that can be made comprehensible to the human mind through models or pictures. […] Although we can never devise a pictorial representation which shall be both true to nature and intelligible to our minds, we may still be able to make partial aspects of the truth comprehensible through pictorial representations or parables. As the whole truth does not admit of intelligible representation, every such pictorial representation or parable must fail somewhere. The physicist of the last generation was continually making pictorial representations and parables, and also making the mistake of treating the half-truths of pictorial representations and parables as literal truths." (James H Jeans, "Physics and Philosophy" 3rd Ed., 1943)

"It is to be hoped that in the future more and more theoretical physicists will command a deep knowledge of mathematical principles; and also that mathematicians will no longer limit themselves so exclusively to the aesthetic development of mathematical abstractions." (George D Birkhoff, "Mathematical Nature of Physical Theories" American Scientific Vol. 31 (4), 1943)

"A permanent state is reached, in which no observable events occur. The physicist calls this the state of thermodynamical equilibrium, or of ‘maximum entropy’. Practically, a state of this kind is usually reached very rapidly. Theoretically, it is very often not yet an absolute equilibrium, not yet the true maximum of entropy. But then the final approach to equilibrium is very slow. It could take anything between hours, years, centuries […]." (Erwin Schrödinger, "What is Life?", 1944)

"[…] analogy [is] an important source of conjectures. In mathematics, as in the natural and physical sciences, discovery often starts from observation, analogy, and induction. These means, tastefully used in framing a plausible heuristic argument, appeal particularly to the physicist and the engineer." (George Pólya, "How to solve it", 1945)