Science Fiction Authors From England

"The problems for which I could find no solution in fact had no solution."

"There must be countless forms of love. Which is the form which conquers the rest? I cannot define it. I shall not try."

"It’s getting late. I must return to my ship or my men will think I’ve drowned and be celebrating."

"I stared at the water and saw the clouds reflected in it, saw them break to reveal the moon. It was the same moon I had known as John Daker. The same bland face could be made out staring down in contentment at the antics of the creatures of the planet it circled. How many disasters had that moon witnessed? How many foolish crusades? How many wars and battles and murders?"

"I felt sorry for him at that moment. He only wanted what every man wanted—freedom from fear, a chance to raise children with a reasonable certainty that they would be allowed to do the same, a chance to look forward to the future without the knowledge that any plans made might be wrecked forever by some sudden act of violence."

"If the people at the top think that reaching for a gun will solve the problem, why shouldn’t the people at the bottom think the same?"

"To the fearful all things are chaotic. That’s how you get religion (and its bastard child, politics)."

"“We can only be kind to one another,” she said, “there is scarcely any alternative if we are to resist chaos.”"

"Somewhere you can hear them whimpering, as if the evidence of their own mortality were emphasised by the knowledge of other people’s happiness."

"Her face was now a mask of moral outrage. “You talk of fashion while I speak of morality.” It was true that Jerry had never been able to see much of a difference between the two."

"Time was the enemy of identity."

"He realised that Law and Order were not particularly compatible."

"At last the computer had superseded the automobile as the focus for mankind’s hopes and fears."

"Sometimes he would admit that one form of superstition was as good as another, but he still preferred to rely on the forms he knew."

"Irony, Lady Sue, is no substitute for imagination."

"As Barrington Bayley had pointed out in his book Structural Dynamism, man was not an intelligent animal. He was an animal with intelligence that he could apply to some, not all, of his activities."

"What kind of chromosomes a person has is called his genotype, and the appearance of a person is called his phenotype. Thus, males have the genotype XY and the phenotype male. Women have the genotype XX and the phenotype female.… In every war in history there must have been a considerable flow of genes one way or another. Whether the genes of the victors or of the vanquished have increased most is a debatable point."

"Some try to understand the world, while others seek to impose their understanding on it. Unfortunately, Mr. Smiles, these latter folk are those least equipped to perform the operation. Like Frankenstein, my dear Mr. Smiles, they produce a monster."

"“Better the myth of happiness,” Harlequin murmured, “than the myth of despair.”"

"“I appreciate this quest for national identity,” she said, “but it does seem that most traditions were dropped for the good reason that they were revoltingly cruel and stupid.”"

"I was thinking of going into the assassination business. You know what a dreamer I am. Would it be too much of a hit and myth operation, do you think?"

"“There’s more to life than drugs and sex, Mr. Cornelius.” “There’s more than life to drugs and sex. It’s better than nothing.”"

"Yesterday’s underdog is tomorrow’s tyrant."

"Even ruin could not make it picturesque. The streets were awash with weather-stained postcards, bedraggled and muddy King Arthur tea-towels, broken plastic Holy Grails, Excaliburs carved from chalk, tiny Round Tables to hang on the wall, and polystyrene crowns. In the reign of one Elizabeth the ideal had reached perfection and, in the reign of another, it had achieved its ultimate degradation."

"“Is that what you are? An android?” “You could find out if you made love to me.” Faustaff smiled and shook his head. “Sweetheart, you’re just not my type.” “I thought any young woman was your type, doctor.” “So did I till I met you.”"

"Everything dies eventually—but that shouldn’t stop us enjoying life while it is there to be enjoyed."

"I have never had trouble with conflicting interpretations of my work. Once the story is published, it belongs to the reader."

"“An ethic is simply a system of survival,” Velusi said. “What does an ethic mean when there is no chance of survival?”"

"Fear was back and with it the old terrors, the old mental aberrations, the old superstitions, the old religions. He knew the pattern. He had studied it in the text books. He knew how little power rational argument had when faced with minds turned sick by fear. He knew how quickly a cult of the kind he had seen could proliferate and dominate a society and then split internally and become several warring sects."

"The society was the nearest thing to perfection that had ever existed; vital without being violent, stable without being stagnant. This society had resulted from a number of factors, the most important being a small population served by a sophisticated technology and an equally sophisticated administrative system. The arts were alive, there was universal literacy, the philosophies flourished."

"Alain left the cell, left Police Headquarters and stood for a long time by a splashing fountain, staring into the clear water and watching the darting goldfish swimming in the narrow confines of the pool. Did they understand just how narrow their little universe was? he wondered. They seemed happy enough, if fish could be happy. But if they weren’t happy, he reflected, neither were they sad. They had no tradition but instinct, no ritual but the quest for food and a mate. He didn’t envy them much."

"Listening to the conversation, his faith in the stupidity of human nature was fully restored."

"Why ascribe meaning to all this? The further away from the fundamentals of life we go, the more we quest for their meaning. There is no meaning. It is here. It has always been here in some state. It will always be here. That is all we can ever truly know. It is all we should want to know."

"A threat to free speech. It was marvelous how they accepted the principles of democracy and rejected them at the same time by talk of mob action!"

"Any forthcoming dispute was likely to be a battle between ignorance of one sort and ignorance of another."

"Perhaps he was old and wise, perhaps he was just old."

"He existed in all the many dimensions of the multiverse. Yet he, in common with all others, was bound by the dimension of Time. He had cast off the chains of space but was tied, as perhaps all denizens of the multiverse would always be, by the imperturbable prowl of Time, which brooked no halt, which condoned no tampering with its movement, whether to slow it or to speed it. Time, the changer, could not be changed. Space, perhaps, the material environment, could be conquered. Time, never."

"The time has come for the dismantling of fantasies. That is already happening to our universe. Now that we have this one chance of survival we must finally rid ourselves of fantasies and seize that chance! For centuries our race has built on false assumptions. If you build a fantasy based on a false assumption and continue to build on such a fantasy, your whole existence becomes a lie which you implant in others who are too lazy or too busy to question its truth. In this manner you threaten the very existence of reality, because, by refusing to obey its laws, those laws engulf and destroy you. The human race has for too long been manufacturing convenient fantasies and calling them laws. For ages this was so. Take war, for instance. Politicians assume that something is true, assume that strife is inevitable, and by building on such false assumptions, lo and behold, they create further wars which they have, ostensibly, sought to prevent. We have, until now, accepted too many fantasies as being truths, too many truths as fantasies. And we have one last chance to discover the real nature of our existence. I am prepared to take it!"

"“He was a fool,” said Willow calmly to Klein. “There are many who refuse their responsibilities. Fooling themselves they search for a ‘higher ideal’. He was a fool.” “What are responsibilities?” said Klein laconically. “He knows. Responsibility, my dear, is another word for self-interest. For survival.” She looked at Klein uncomprehendingly."

"Again this is an old question, a bit trite from being asked too often, maybe, but how much of what we believe is true and how much is what we wish were true."

"The Dead God’s Book and the Golden Barge are one and the same. They have no real existence, save in the wishful imagination of mankind. There is, the story says, no Holy Grail which will transform a man overnight from bewildered ignorance to complete knowledge—the answer already is within him, if he cares to train himself to find it. A rather overemphasised fact, throughout history, but one generally ignored all the same."

"“And thank you, also, for the joke.” “The joke?” “Why truly—the best joke is but a simple statement of truth.”… He mounted, flapped the reins, and, as the gray gelding broke into a trot he said to himself: “A joke indeed, but it is a pity that men do not laugh at it more often.”"

"“Is there anything you need?” “Need? Aye. Peace of mind. Knowledge of my true destiny. A quiet place where I can be with Cymoril, whom I love.”"

"Like so many others he seemed to equate self-pity with artistic inspiration. In an earlier age he might have discovered his public and become quite rich (self-pity passing for passion in the popular understanding)."

"She opened her bag and made sure of her jar of instant coffee. It was the one thing she couldn’t get at the End of Time."

"Why hadn't the dead human race realized this? It was only necessary to exist, not to be trying constantly to prove you existed when the fact was plain. Plain to him, he realized, because he had climbed a mountain. This knowledge was his reward. He had not received any ability to think with greater clarity, or a vision to reveal the secret of the universe, or an experience of ecstasy. He had been given, by himself, by his own action, insensate peace, the infinite tranquility of existing."

"“Your yearning, Pepin Hunchback, is not for the past as it was,” she was saying softly. “It is for a world that never existed—a Paradise, a Golden Age. Men have always spoken of such a time in history—but such an idyllic world is a yearning for childhood, not the past, for lost innocence. It is childhood we wish to return to.”"

"Time and Matter are both ideas. Matter makes a more immediate impression on Man, but Time’s effects are longer lasting."

"You fail to understand, my friend. We do not control time. If anything, it controls us. We simply measure it."

"“I am already late, I fear. What time is it?” “Time? Why the present, of course.”"