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All Quotes by author - Gregory Benford
" Aging is mostly the failure to repair. "
Mostly
Failure
Aging
" Around 1930, a small new phenomenon arose in Depression-ridden America, spawned out of the letter columns in science fiction magazines: fandom. "
Science
Small
America
" As a literature of change driven by technology, science fiction presents religion to a part of the reading public that probably seldom goes to church. "
Science
Change
Technology
" As fandom grew more variegated, genzines reflected a broadening of interests, carrying personal columns of humor and reflection, science articles, amateur fiction, stylish gossip, and inevitably, thoughtful pieces on the future of fandom. "
Science
Reflection
More
" As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say. "
Book
You
School
" At the end of the day, I sit down for about five minutes and review all the problems I'm working on, research problems or writing problems, and I go to sleep. Then when I wake up in the morning, I've trained myself to not open my eyes and to just lie there and recall the problems and see if there's anything there. "
Myself
Sleep
Eyes
" A view of nature as dense and nonlinear is at the core of our contemporary science. Process and order emerge subtly. "
Science
View
Core
" Because I've been a full professor doing research and lecturing at the University of California, I didn't have a lot of time to write, so I have always used my unconscious a great deal to do the really heavy lifting. "
Doing
Research
Time
" Certainly I see no reason why society should prevent grieving parents from having a baby cloned from the cells of a dead child if they wish. "
Child
Society
See
" Congress came to see NASA primarily as a jobs program, not an exploratory agency. "
Jobs
Came
Congress
" Dinner at college high table is one of the legendary experiences of England. I could remember keenly each one I had attended; the repartee is sharper than the cutlery. "
Table
College
Dinner
" DNA sequencing opens vast ethical issues. We shall be able to know who has defective genes. What will it mean when we can be sure we're not all born equal? Worked out, the implications will scare a lot of people. Insurance companies will not want to cover those with a genetic predisposition to illness, for example. Here lurk myriad lawsuits. "
DNA
Born
Insurance
" Electromagnetic theory and experiment gave us the telephone, radio, TV, computers, and made the internal combustion engine practical - thus, the car and airplane, leading inevitably to the rocket and outer-space exploration. "
Computers
Exploration
Car
" Enzymes - plainly the most important biotechnology of our era - already permeate many industrial processes. Unlike fossil fuels, they carry chemical programming which drives complex reactions, are renewable, and work at ordinary pressures and temperatures. "
Work
Programming
Important
" Experience shows that if you put more ethicists on a problem, you can end up with more problems. "
You
Problems
Experience
" Fandom grew first through individual correspondence. It was cheap and quick, continent-wide contact for a penny stamp. "
Quick
Cheap
Individual
" Genre pleasures are many, but the quality of shared values within an ongoing discussion may be the most powerful, enlisting lifelong devotion in its fans. "
Quality
Values
Powerful
" I have an artificial left shoulder, wired back together after a softball accident. "
Shoulder
Together
Accident
" I like audacious ideas. "
Audacious
Ideas
Like
" I'm a very big Faulkner fan 'cause I'm a Southerner. "
Fan
Very
Southerner
" In coastal waters rich in runoff, plankton can swarm densely, a million in a drop of water. They color the sea brown and green where deltas form from big rivers, or cities dump their sewage. Tiny yet hugely important, plankton govern how well the sea harvests the sun's bounty, and so are the foundation of the ocean's food chain. "
Sea
Ocean
Sun
" Indeed, the history of 20th century physics was in large measure about how to avoid the infinities that crop up in particle theory and cosmology. The idea of point particles is convenient but leads to profound, puzzling troubles. "
Measure
History
Physics
" In science fiction, basic doubts featured prominently in the worlds of Philip K. Dick. I knew Phil for 25 years, and he was always getting onto me, a scientist. He was a great fan of quantum uncertainty, epistemology in science, the lot. "
Always
Uncertainty
Science
" In temperate zones, winter is the best insecticide; it keeps the bugs in check. The tropics enjoy no such respite, so plants there have developed a wide range of alkaloids that kill off nosy insects and animals. "
Plants
Animals
Enjoy
" In the end, postmodern art is obscene not because it is offensive, but because it is boring. "
Art
End
Boring
" Invoking nature with its implied supremacy ignores that many cultures have fundamentally differing ideas of even what nature is, much less how it should work. "
Nature
Cultures
How
" It really helps if you know your subject matter immediately. I find that enormously useful because then you can concentrate on all the usual novelistic things - the character, the plot and so forth - and you don't have to spend an enormous amount of time learning another trade, essentially. "
Learning
Know
Character
" It turns out that if you optimize the performance of a car and of an airplane, they are very far away in terms of mechanical features. So you can make a flying car. But they are not very good planes, and they are not very good cars. "
Flying
Airplane
Car
" I've always felt that specialization is best left to the insects. "
Best
Felt
Always
" Like immense time-binding discussions, genres allow ideas to be developed and traded, and for variations to be spun down through decades. "
Ideas
Down
Through
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