On Impossibility (From Fiction to Science Fiction)

"[Sherlock Holmes:] How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" (Sir Arthur C Doyle, "Sign of the Four", 1890)

"Except under controlled conditions, or in circumstances where it is possible to ignore individuals and consider only large numbers and the law of averages, any kind of accurate foresight is impossible." (Aldous Huxley, "Time Must Have a Stop", 1944)

"Can any of us fix anything? No. None of us can do that. We're specialized. Each one of us has his own line, his own work. I understand my work, you understand yours. The tendency in evolution is toward greater and greater specialization. Man's society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it. Continued complexity makes it impossible for us to know anything outside our own personal field — I can't follow the work of the man sitting at the next desk over from me. Too much knowledge has piled up in each field. And there are too many fields." (Philip K. Dick, The Variable Man", 1952)

"It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible." (Arthur C Clarke, "Profiles of the Future", 1962)

"It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable." (Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone, "The Fugitive", 1962)

"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)

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." (Arthur C Clarke, "Profiles of the Future", 1962)

"It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from." (Douglas N Adams, "The Original Hitchhiker Radio Script, Fit the Fifth", 1978)

"Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible." (Rod Sterling)