All Quotes

"Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written."

"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."

"Until recently baby production was largely dependent on slave labour; as soon as women are allowed to answer the question "Would you like to squeeze as many objects the size of a watermelon out of your body as it takes to kill you?" they generally answer "No, thank you." This leads to falling birthrates everywhere women are not kept enslaved and ignorant of the alternatives."

"Most of my scars are not fire-related and I no longer say "I know what I am doing" at critical moments."

"If there's a stack [of novels to review], the unpromising stuff goes at the top and the promising stuff goes at the bottom. That way, I am eager to finish Overwrought Romantic Mary Sue Fantasy because I know that will let me read Niche Product That Only the Author, James and Some Guy at JPL Likes."

"[H]umans hate to admit error even as they stand there, black and smoldering, with the stub of a cigarette in one hand, in the middle of a wide crater containing them and the remains of a sign that once read 'DANGER: VOLATILE EXPLOSIVES'"

"It would let me protect the Earth from asteroids. In fact, for a small fee I would protect the Earth on a monthly basis, locating rocks that could be steered into the Earth and then not doing it if the cheque didn't bounce."

"Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences."

"Goodkind is noted for subtle allegories the same way Mt Kilimanjaro is known for floating weightlessly."

"Let's step back and think about the likely outcome of a scenario that involves the words "James Nicoll", "a box of sharp needles" and "possibly without ever having achieved full consciousness" for a moment, shall we?"

"[The cat] and I have an agreement: I leave her alone and don't make sudden moves when I wake up to find her perched on my chest, staring with an unblinking hostile gaze at my face and in return she rarely mutilates me."

"It's bad to wake up and see a large cat in mid-leap from the rough vicinity of the ceiling."

"Deadly nightshade is the only plant I have ever been able to get to grow for me."

"I believe that I have now experienced the lifetime maximum exposure to bottom spanking in fantasy novels."

""Gun-wielding recluse gunned down by local police" isn't the epitaph I want. I am hoping for "Witnesses reported the sound up to two hundred kilometers away" or "Last body part finally located"."

"The number of times I have been declared dead is statistically insignificant,although admittedly non-zero."

"My father once discovered that one cannot "walk off" gangrene."

"Never bring a gun to a fight where the other guy has a time-machine and tomorrow's newspapers."

"'s antagonists are always evil moustache-twirlers. She could write a book about a golf open and the main rival to the hero would turn out to have clubs made from compressed kittens."

"It takes a courageous Mormon to turn to archaeology to support their argument"

"First rule of space programs in SF: no matter how successful or large they are by our standards, the people in the stories will always bitch about underfunding. This is probably realistic."

"The thing about the Star Wars expanded universe that most impresses me is how the need for endless sequels has taken what was way back in the late Disco a fairly upbeat series where the good guys eventually prevailed and turned into a crapsack setting that's grimmer than the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Congo Wars I & II and the Mongol Conquests combined."

"At some point when I wasn't paying attention, comedic genocide just stopped working for me. This is a shame because so much fantasy and SF depends on genocide as positive plot element. This trifling oddity of taste must have robbed me of hours of morally equivocal entertainment."

"A common issue with SF settings is that causally disconnected civilizations nevertheless are close enough in technological development that conflict is possible, rather than it being a matter of laser cannons against a thin film of single celled organisms."

"This I (still) believe: Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. Things with lit fuses should not be held onto. Beware the savage croquet ball. If it is -30 out, put on a coat before you leave the house. Just because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the objects do not cease to exist. Clotheslines are the enemy of the bicyclist. If you don't remember how you got on the ground or where the blood came from, don't get up right away. Gym teachers think it's funny to commit assault with a baseball so don't day-dream during PE even if they have you so far in the outfield there are DEW line posts on either side of you. All guns are loaded. So are many bows. Trebuchets are for outside use only..."

"The sharp side of the knife goes away from you. Pure reason does not trump brute force but suprisingly few people know what hot peppers look like when the teacher asks if you have enough to share with everyone. Never take the lid of a pressure cooker 'to see if it's done yet'. Even if you are careful with the picric acid that won't matter if you are careless with other items next to it. Move *away* from mysterious burglar alarms. Do not append 'you moron' to exposition directed at people who have just broken into your building. 'We need to talk' is overwhelmingly unlikely to precede good news. A rough brick wall may be used to sort socks or as a backdrop for sock-art (The Neglected Art). A silent cat is Up to Something. Lungs are unsuited for many possible atmospheres, including that of London, and anything with a high content of industrial cleaners. Youth will not save you from Newton's Laws. Or Darwin's."

"Engineers and certified pilots may be expensive but talented young men with a teenager's grasp of risk are surprisingly affordable."

"I didn't skip the smut. The author went to the trouble of writing it, after all. I did not feel to make notes for possible application later on but I also never wondered if the author was a virgin raised in an abandoned hentai warehouse, which is always a possibility for modern pornographers and erotica writers."

"seems from all reports to have been a very pleasant fellow but he did have one huge blind spot, which is that he was as sexist as a giant ball of sexists wrapped in a dense layer of yet more sexists."

"Alas, time and head injuries are stealing all my memories."

"There's a rule I used to call The Niven Rule but which I just now have decided to call the Rusting Bridges rule. It came to me after reading Niven's “All The Bridges Rusting.” In this story, humans have by the early 21st century explored the Solar System and sent not just one but two crewed ships to Alpha Centauri ... despite which the characters moan endlessly about the dire state of the space program. “Eyes of Amber” would be another example of the Rusting Bridges [Rule]: No matter how much the space program you actually have has achieved, whether it's first contact with aliens or trips to nearby stars, it can never have achieved as much as the space programs you can imagine would have achieved in its place, given that imaginary programs aren't limited by issues of politics, funding, or engineering."

"Atomic war is bad but you know what's even worse? Having had enough atomic wars that you can rank them in terms of horribleness."

"My nightmare has come true/My nightmare has come true/Yeah, it's all coming true"

"The Man is making little bets/Playing with our lives"

"Look at you and your struggle for freedom/But you ain't nothing/We all pay the Man for living"

"Shut up, you talk too much/Pay the Man"

"We are strong We are right We won't be pushed aside We'll go on We will fight We will not Compromise We will never lose to you We will never lose to you We will never lose to you We will never lose to you"

"I know you wanna hit that, I know you wanna hit that, hit that Everybody's gettin' with, I say Consequences are a lot, but hey That's the way it That's the way things go"

"And I want - I've tried as hard as I can And I need - I've taken all I can stand And I fall - But I am running a race Against myself,"

"Somewere in the night, there's a light In front of me Heaven up above, with a shove Abandons me And even though I try I fall in the river of you You manage to bring me down too"

"Life goes on, come of age, can't hold on, turn the page, time rolls on, wipe these eyes, yesterday laughs, tomorrow cries""

"You cannot stop us, You cannot bring us down, Never give up, We go on and on, You'll never break us, Never bring us down, We are alive!"

"The Lord of the Rings"

"related works"

"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away. They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25."

"Aha! The Alien Planet Canada series, where the planet the characters are marooned on seems to be Manitoba. Bad bad world building."

"I have hated every Kress I read, especially this one, but the Bear is a standard Bear and if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like."

"After enough concussions the head injuries blur together."

"Hell, Chuck Yeager could do it in his sleep while on fire, I'm sure."

"I wonder if he's planning a book called SRS? Or F'lu?"