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

"The mathematicians and physics men have their mythology; they work alongside the truth, never touching it; their equations are false But the things work. Or, when gross error appears, they invent new ones; they drop the theory of waves In universal ether and imagine curved space." (Robinson Jeffers, "The Beginning and the End and Other Poems, The Great Wound", 1963

"Their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do." (Douglas Adams, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish", 1985)

"All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elegant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of its rules." (Iain Banks, "The Player of Games", 1988)

"Physics is the basic science. One can easily argue that all other sciences are specialized aspects of physics." (Isaac Asimov, "Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations", 1988)

"It does highlight the irony that everything you go to see is changed by the very action of going to see it, which is the sort of problem which physicists have been wrestling with for most of this century." (Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See", 1990)

"Almost every credible physicist will tell you there’s nothing in physics that says time travel can’t happen [...]" (Peter Clines, "The End of the Experiment", [in J W Schnarrv (ed), "Timelines"] 2010)

"Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like "optics" or "thermodynamics" are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections." (Ted Chiang, "Arrival: Film tie-in", 2016)

"'Do you really believe in physics?'  'I dont know what that means. Physics tries to draw a numerical picture of the world. I dont know that it actually explains anything. You cant illustrate the unknown. Whatever that might mean.'" (Cormac McCarthy, "Stella Maris", 2022)