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" When I first started, my novels were set in the far future. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Were
Started
Set
Related Quotes:
" I think there's always been, to some degree, a misunderstanding about what science fiction is all about, in that it has been judged by the general public as being literature of prediction, and it isn't. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Science
Think
Always
" You have to have confidence in where you're going. Don't live and die by the fans' tweets. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Live
Confidence
You
" I've long said that if Canada has a role on the world stage, it's principally as a role model, a demonstration that people of all types can get together and live in peace and harmony, which is something we really do most of the time here. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Live
Peace
People
" I'm a very skeptical guy: my willing suspension of disbelief doesn't go very far when I'm reading other people's SF, and it goes even less far when I'm writing my own. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Reading
People
Own
" Science fiction should not be dismissed as escapism. It is a profound vehicle for talking about social and political issues. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Political
Talking
Science
" The traditional route to success in science fiction is by making a name for yourself in short fiction, so people who read science fiction magazines will recognize your byline on a novel. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Science
People
Name
" The only shows that Americans watch in big numbers are shows about lawyers, doctors, or cops... People don't tune in to watch scientists unless they are forensic scientists. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Lawyers
Watch
People
" If you look at the United States, most of the country is pretty much uninhabited. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Most
You
United
" Hard science fiction, which is what I write, often is rightly criticized for having either negligible or unbelievable characterization, but the science I've actually studied most post-secondarily is psychology, and characterization is the art of dramatizing psychological principles. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Principles
Psychology
Science
" The standard model of particle physics says that the universe consists of a very small number of particles, 12, and a very small number of forces, four. If we're correct about those 12 particles and those four forces and understand how they interact, properly, we have the recipe for baking up a universe. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Physics
Universe
Small
" Traditionally, the science fiction reader has been the 16- to 24-year-old male, especially the male with an interest in technology. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Science
Technology
Science Fiction
" Social progress is a big thing for me. Although science fiction is traditionally concerned with the hard sciences, which is chemistry, physics, and, some might argue, biology, my father was and still is a social scientist at the University of Toronto. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Science
Chemistry
Progress
" When we have machines that are as intelligent - and then twice as intelligent - as we are, there is no reason why that relationship cannot be synergistic rather than antagonistic. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Relationship
Reason
Intelligent
" The heart and soul of good writing is research; you should write not what you know but what you can find out about. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Heart
Research
Soul
" I'm much more interested in writing about the things that engage and enrage me as an adult rather than in wallowing in childhood sorrows. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Me
Childhood
More
" A lot of people forget that the origin of science fiction in the U.S. was in the post-First World War period when there was a real interest to get people into technical careers. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Forget
People
World
" I was paid more for the serialization rights for each book than I got as an advance for my first novel. In other words, there is an economic value in serialization in and of itself. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Rights
First
Value
" One of the things that science fiction gets to do is thought experiments about the human condition that would be impractical or unethical to conduct in real life. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Thought
Real
Life
" There were four major 20th-century science fiction writers: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. Of those four, the first three were all published principally in science-fiction magazines. They were preaching to the converted. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Science Fiction
Three
First
" Once we no longer have the intellectual upper hand, then we quite literally, by definition, cannot outwit our successors. So unless we are absolutely sure that the machines we are building right now are not going to eventually become our new robot overlords, prudence is called for. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Building
Intellectual
New
" We absolutely do some of the best science in the world in Canada, across a broad spectrum of disciplines: quantum computing in Waterloo, paleontology in Alberta, neuroscience at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health in Vancouver, and many more. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Health
Best
World
" There's always been a quality to being a science-fiction reader. Usually, you're the only one in your class, or there are only one or two in your whole town. You're always the guy who reads that strange stuff. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Strange
Quality
Always
" Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system. "
Robert J. Sawyer
War
Class
Political
" Science fiction's power, if it has any, is that it gives us reasonable extrapolations, not wild and woolly stuff. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Us
Wild
Power
" George Orwell's science-fiction classic 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' wasn't a failure because the future it predicted failed to come to pass. Rather, it was a resounding success because it helped us prevent that future. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Us
Success
Classic
" The single best thing about Mars is the reduced gravity. It's 38 percent of Earth's gravity - about one third. Almost never have you seen that portrayed in film or television. Mars is just portrayed as a place that's got reddish sand but is otherwise pretty much identical to the Mojave Desert, and that's not the case. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Best
Desert
Sand
" The great thing about science fiction is that it transcends national boundaries. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Science
Science Fiction
Fiction
" You can't be a 21st-century science fiction writer writing about Mars without doing tips of the hat to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Ray Bradbury, to H.G. Wells, to the guys who first put it in the public imagination that Mars was an exciting place. "
Robert J. Sawyer
You
Hat
Imagination
" Regrettably, with '2001' having a title that had a year in it, science fiction essentially set itself up in the public's imagination as saying, 'Here's what you get if you wait to that year.' Well, we all waited till that year, and we didn't get anything at all like that. "
Robert J. Sawyer
You
Wait
Saying
" If you like 'The Nature of Things,' or if you like 'Quirks and Quarks' you'll certainly like Lee Smolin's writing, and 'Time Reborn' is his latest nonfiction book, and it's an absolutely compelling read. It's worth the time. "
Robert J. Sawyer
Worth
You
Book