Detective Fiction Authors

"Asimov: I don't know of any science fiction writer who really attempts to be a prophet. Such authors accomplish their tasks not by being correct in their predictions, necessarily, but merely by hammering home—in story after story—the notion that life is going to be different."

"SWA Magazine: Talking about spacecraft, what do you think about the shuttle program?"

"Asimov: Battlestar Galactica for instance, started off with twenty to thirty minutes of space battles which looked exactly like air battles in World War I. You could swear that the space ships were surrounded by air the way the maneuvered. One felt it was unworthy."

"Asimov: Well, I liked Star Wars. I thought Battlestar Galactica was such a close imitation of Star Wars, emphasizing the less attractive portions, that I was a little impatient with it."

"There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass."

"If an interaction is too weak to be detectable or to exert influence in any way, then by any operational definition, it doesn't exist."

"I've lived most of my life already and I suppose I can argue myself into believing that I have no great cause to love humanity. However, only a few people have hurt me, and if I hurt everyone in return that is unconscionable usury."

"You know that prudery is only the other side of prurience. The words are even on the same page in the dictionary."

"The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists."

"I fear my ignorance."

"I know nothing of that directly; I only know what I have been told by other young ones who couldn't have known directly either. I want to find out the truth about them and the wanting has grown until there is more of curiosity in me than fear."

"I don't like anything that's got to be. I want to know why."

"Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing."

"He sat in his chair, fingers aimlessly drumming, drumming. Somewhere in the Sun, protons were clinging together with just a trifling additional avidity and with each moment that avidity grew and at some moment the delicate balance would break down . . . "And no one on Earth will live to know I was right," cried out Lamont, and blinked and blinked to keep back the tears."

"“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.”"

"Don't finish, Pete. I've heard it all before. All I have to do is decipher the thinking of a non-human intelligence." "A better-than-human intelligence. Those creatures from the para-Universe are trying to make themselves understood." "That may be," sighed Bronowski, "but they're trying to do it through my intelligence, which is better than human I sometimes think, but not much. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and wonder if different intelligences can communicate at all; or, if I've had a particularly bad day, whether the phrase 'different intelligences' has meaning at all." "It does," said Lamont savagely, his hands clearly bailing into fists within his lab coat pockets. "It means Hallam and me. It means that fool-hero, Dr. Frederick Hallam and me. We're different intelligences because when I talk to him he doesn't understand. His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I'd say his mind stops functioning, but lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop."

"To Mankind And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all."

""The Last Question" is my personal favorite, the one story I made sure would not be omitted from this collection. Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer. Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles. No other story I have written has anything like this effect on my readers — producing at once an unshakeable memory of the plot and an unshakeable forgettery of the title and even author. I think it may be that the story fills them so frighteningly full, that they can retain none of the side-issues."

"How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?"

"Confidence is rewarded, apparently. There was a homewhen proverb that went, "Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy.""

"This - this - was my life's work. My past - humanity's future. Foundation. So beatiful. So alive. And nothing can...Dors!"

"Riots! What do I care about riots now? - What do I care about anything now?"

"For ten years the Galactic Empire had been without an Emperor, but there was no indication of that fact in the way the Imperial Palace grounds were operated. Millennia of custom made the absence of an Emperor meaningless."

"Seldon found himself raging at the passage of time."

"There is social and psychological inertia, as well as physical inertia."

"If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over."

"You’re naïve Hari. Or not a historian, which is the same thing."

"It is not important what can or cannot be done. What is important is what people will or will not believe can be done."

"“It strikes me that no one could possibly want to be Emperor.” “No sane person would, I agree, but the ‘Imperial wish,’ as it is frequently called, is like a disease that, when caught, drives out sanity. And the closer you get to high office, the more likely you are to catch the disease.”"

"You can always put something noble in a sneering fashion if you try."

"At the slightest stress, human beings seemed to divide themselves into antagonistic groups."

"Asceticism among a ruling class—except for public show—is very rare."

"Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions—not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?"

"Does said, “You’re not a…a believer?” “I’m a scholar,” said Mycelium with obvious pride."

"The cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day."

"I don’t want to believe it just because I want to believe it."

"But it seemed so likely to him that on every world the earliest histories were medleys of self-serving heroisms and minidramas that were meant as morality plays and were not to be taken literally. It was surely true of Helicon, yet you would find scarcely a Heliconian who would not swear by all the tales told and insist it was all true history."

"I have always dealt with economic forces, rather than philosophic forces, but you can’t split history into neat little nonoverlapping divisions. For instance, religions tend to accumulate wealth when successful and that eventually tends to distort the economic development of a society."

"There is too much history and there is too little of it that is told."

"Apparently, mathematics and the martial arts are not necessarily mutually exclusive."

"It’s a dull world, full of farms and with lots of cattle, both four-legged and two-legged."

"“As for status, that’s the sort of push and pull I’d just as soon avoid. I’ve seen many people with status, but I’m still looking for a happy one. Status won’t sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking."

"“My field of specialization is the mathematical analysis of social structure.” “Sounds horrible.”"

"“It is absolutely forbidden for the Imperial government to exercise any security control over the University or its members. There is complete freedom. Anything can be discussed here, anything can be said here.” “What about violent crime?” “Then the University authorities themselves handle it, with reason and care—and there are virtually no crimes of violence. The students and faculty appreciate their freedom and understand its terms. Too much rowdiness, the beginning of riot and bloodshed, and the government may feel it has the right to break the unwritten agreement and send in the troops. No one wants that, not even the government, so a delicate balance is maintained.”"

"“But it’s been quiet under Cleon. And we’ve had fifty years of peace.” “Yes, but soldiers who are well-paid would resent having that pay reduced just because there is peace. Admirals resist mothballing ships and having themselves reduced in rank simply because there is less for them to do. So the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That’s what I call decay. Don’t you?”"

"We might not be able to give out the news for security reasons—that’s the excuse they always advance for hiding bad news—but I would know."

"Walking is still the best form of short-distance transportation. It’s the most convenient, the cheapest, and the most healthful, Countless years of technological advance have not changed that."

"Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income."

"All history shows that we do not learn from the lessons of the past."

"Yet even mathematicians must be young to begin with."