"The Hellenic world did not view the passage of time as we do. History was considered in an episodic sense, as the struggles of an unchanging mankind against a relentless and unchanging fate. The slow process of organic evolution had not yet been detected, and the grandest model for a world view was the seeming changeless patterning of the stars. It took the same processes that set the stage for science fiction—eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century science—to provide for the first time in the history of the world a sense of historical direction, of time as a developmental, nonrepetitive sequence. This particular world view became a part of science fiction in a far more explicit fashion than in any other body of storytelling, as it provided the basis for its favorite exercise: extrapolation. I feel that because of this, science fiction is the form of literature least affected by Aristotle’s dicta with respect to the nature of the human condition, which he saw as immutable, and the nature of man’s fate, which he saw as inevitable."
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Science fiction authors from the United StatesAbsurdistsNovelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesPoets from the United States
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Some Science Fiction Parameters: A Biased View (p. 247)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roger_Zelazny
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Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny (13 May 1937 – 14 June 1995) was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels. He won the Nebula award three times, with 14 nominations, and the Hugo award six times, also with 14 nominations, including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965; subsequently published under the title This Immortal, 1966) and the novel Lord of Light (1967).
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