Science Fiction Authors From England

"“I was thinking,” Harrison explained. “I approve of that,” put in His Excellency. He lugged a couple of huge tomes our of the wall-shelves, began to thumb rapidly through them. “Do plenty of thinking whenever you’ve the chance and it will become a habit. It will get easier and easier as time rolls on. In fact, a day may come when it can be done without pain.”"

"“It’s your right to refuse to believe. That’s freedom, isn’t it?” “Up to a point. A man has duties. He’s no right to refuse those.” “No?” She raised tantalizing eyebrows, delicately curved. “Who defines those duties—himself, or somebody else?” “His superiors, most times.” “No man is superior to another. No man has the right to define another man’s duties.” She paused, eyeing him speculatively. “If anyone on Terra exercises such idiotic power, it is only because idiots permit him. They fear freedom. They prefer to be told. They like being ordered around. What men!”"

"Power and scapegoats go together like husband and wife."

"The curse of being an officer is that one is outranked by other officers."

"“What’s the matter with you? Got a bellyache or something?” “No, sir. I’ve been thinking.” “Does it hurt that much?”"

"Well, that is a valuable addition to the sum total of our knowledge. Our minds are now enriched by the thought that an anonymous individual may be presented with a futile object for an indefinable purpose when he reaches his unknown destination."

"Any chance of accidentally dropping our cargo of bureaucrats overboard on the way back? A misfortune like that might benefit the spaceways, if not humanity."

"“Nuts to that! I consider myself a cut above these Kastans, having been conceived in holy wedlock.” “So do we all. But we must conceal the fact for as long as seems expedient. Good manners is the art of pretending that one is not superior.”"

"I can remember depending on people like Eric Frank Russell and J. T. Macintosh to give me a good, comfortable read, to tell me a story. Whether they told me anything I didn't know or hadn't thought about or read someplace else was another matter."

"Science fiction, like any other genuine literary form, must evolve. It was easier in the old days — easier to find ideas, easier to stop in the middle of everything for a dissertation on Jupiter's moons. The modern way, starting a story in the middle of a future- or other-world environment and taking it from there is a challenge to the writer. It isn't always easy, but it is fun."

"Listen to me. You were born in Masham, capital city of Diracta – the Sirian home planet. Your father was a trader there at the time. You lived on Diracta until the age of seventeen, when you returned with your parents to Terra."

"That was the kind of chance that must be taken when one holes up in known and regularly checked haunts. The risk was not enormous, in fact it was small – but it was still there. And when tried, sentenced and waiting for death it is no consolation to know that what came off was a hundred to one chance. To keep going and to maintain the one-man battle the enemy had to be outwitted, if possible, all along the line and all the time."

"When one is fighting a paper-war one uses paper-war tactics that in the long run can be just as lethal as high explosive. And the tactics are not limited in scope by use of one material. The said material is very variable in form. Paper can convey a private warning, a public threat, secret temptation, open defiance; wall-bills, window-stickers, leaflets dropped by the thousands from the roof-tops, cards left on seats or slipped into pockets and purses... money."

"The first rule of captaincy is to consider the men before considering an exterior problem. There is no real solution to any predicament unless there is also the means to apply it."

"After this, doors had to be opened with all the caution of a tax collector coping with a mysterious parcel that ticks."

"Markham was going to hand him a tough one. That was Markham’s job: to rake through a mess of laconic, garbled, distorted or eccentric reports, pick out the obvious problems and dump them squarely in the laps of whoever happened to be hanging around and was considered suitable to solve them. One thing could be said in favor of this technique: its victims often were bothered, bedeviled or busted, but at least they were never bored. The problems were not commonplace, the solutions sometimes fantastic."

"If there’s one lesson we’ve learned in the cosmos it’s that of never despising an alien culture. A species too big to learn soon goes small."

"Inside their military minds conditioning masqueraded as logic."

"We first dug out sixteen thousand fluent speakers of the several Sirian dialects. Eliminating the females and children brought the number down to nine thousand. Then, step by step, we cut out the elderly, the infirm, the weak, the untrustworthy, the temperamentally unsuitable. We weeded out those too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too stupid, too rash, too cautious, and so forth. We weren't left with many among whom to seek for wasps."

"“Do you suppose that this other-life might be…might be…like us?” “I see no reason why not,” declared Bvandt, after some thought. “We are by far the highest form in the known cosmos, therefore any other high form must be similar.” “The logic of that is not evident.”"

"“Back at Terran H.Q.,” said Maxwell, “one is not shot at dawn for sabotage, treachery, assassination or any equally trifling misdeed. One is blindfolded and stood against the wall for not filling out forms, or for filling out the wrong ones, or for filling out the right ones with the wrong details.”"

"Superior life does not establish itself by benefit of brains alone; manual dexterity is equally essential."

"“The World Council,” Railton snorted. “All they’re interested in is exploration, discovery and trade. All they can think of is culture and cash. They’re completely devoid of any sense of peril.” “Not being military officers,” Ashmore pointed out, “they can hardly be expected to exist in a state of perpetual apprehension.”"

"Obviously riled, he growled at Lawson, “The right to unobstructed passage covers our vessels as much as anyone else’s.” “It covers no warship bearing instructions to intercept, question, search or detain any other spaceship it considers suspicious,” declared the other. “Violators of the law are not entitled to claim protection of the law.” “Can you tell me how to conduct a war between systems without sending armed ships through space?” asked Markhamwit, bitterly sarcastic. Lawson waved an indifferent hand. “We aren’t the least bit interested in that problem. It is your own worry.” “It cannot be done,” Markhamwit shouted. “That’s most unfortunate,” remarked Lawson, full of false sympathy. “It creates an awful state of no-war.” “Are you trying to be funny?” “Is peace funny?” “War is a serious matter,” bawled Markhamwit, striving to retain a grip on his temper. “It cannot be ended with a mere flick of the finger.” “The fact should be borne in mind by those who so nonchalantly start them,” advised Lawson, quite unmoved by the Great Lord’s ire. “The Nileans started it.” “They say that you did.” “They are incorrigible liars.” “That’s their opinion of you, too.” A menacing expression on his face, Markhamwit said, “Do you believe them?” “We never believe opinions.” “You are evading my question. Somebody has to be a liar. Who do you think it is?” “We haven’t looked into the root-causes of your dispute. It is not our woe. So without any data to go upon we can only hazard a guess.” “Go ahead and do some hazarding then,” Markhamwit invited. He licked expectant lips. “Probably both sides have little regard for the truth,” opined Lawson, undeterred by the other’s attitude. “It is the usual setup. When war breaks out the unmitigated liar comes into his own. His heyday lasts for the duration. After that, the victorious liars hang the vanquished ones.”"

"“After all, somebody has to do the paperwork.” “I’d agree if the paperwork was necessary and made sense.” “If there wasn’t any paperwork, we’d both be out of a job.” “You've got something there. So on this planet there are two thousands of us sitting on our fundaments busily making work for each other.”"

"He thinks he’s heap big. To me he’s just a big heap."

"Reasonableness is strength. Irrationality is weakness."

"Put out the light and there is stumbling in the dark."

"He made it either by sheer good luck or, more likely, happy absence of bad luck."

"Given brawn and brains and enough time there’s always a way in or out. Escapees shot down as they bolted had chosen the wrong time and wrong place, or the right time and wrong place, or the right place at the wrong time. Or they’d neglected brawn in favor of brains, a common fault of the impatient. Or they’d neglected brains in favor of brawn, a fault of the reckless."

"Whenever Man was unable to master his invoice with this bare hands, thought Leeming, the said environment got bullied or coerced into submission by Man plus X. That had been so from the beginning of time—Man plus a tool or a weapon. But X did not have to be anything concrete or solid, it did not have to be lethal or even visible. It could be a dream, an idea, an illusion, a bloody big thundering lie, just anything. There was only one true test—whether it worked."

"The stupid believe because they are credulous. The intelligent do not blindly accept but, when aware of their own ignorance, neither do they reject."

"Nobody knew better than the Solarians that wars are not caused , declared or willingly fought by nations, planetary peoples or shape-groups, for these consist in the main of plain, ordinary folk who crave nothing more than to be left alone. The real culprits are power-drunken cliques of near-maniacs who by dint of one means or another have coerced the rest."

"At a later meeting, I got to chat up Edgar Wallace. He was very pudgy and very British. Always eating sweets. Very rotund. Sweated profusely in the California warmth. At first, he seemed to think my name was Kay Fay! Which gave us all a laugh. And then, ten days later, he caught pneumonia from all that sweating and was soon dead. Merian ditched most of his script and went with a new one by James Creelman and Ruth Schoedsak [sic]."

"The day Mr. Reeder arrived at the Public Prosecutors' Office was indeed a day of fate for Mr. Lambton Green, Branch manager of the London Scottish and Midland Bank."

"Her uncle drove a taxi which he had purchased on the 'never never' system. You pay $80 down and more than you can afford for the rest of your life."

"I never did believe in the equality of the sexes, but no girl is the weaker vessel if she gets first grip of the kitchen poker."

"Dreamin' of thee! Dreamin' of thee!"

"What is a highbrow? He is a man who has found something more interesting than women."

"Twas Beauty that killed the beast!"

"Wallace is for modern London what the Arabian Nights were for arab civilization."

"One thing that happens with gothic fiction, and I think the person who explores this most keenly is probably Angela Carter in her collection of retold fairy tales, is that gothic fiction seems to echo certain fairy tales...She pulls at these threads that fairy tales have, these elements that they have that we don’t think about much."

"Her writing life began in her early 20s in , where she and her first husband, Paul Carter, were part of the folk scene. The and her early novels are set against a landscape more postwar than pop, of derelict houses and bombsites turning to waste ground. The first, ', came out in 1966. Two more followed, establishing her as a promising writer, albeit not one likely to prop up the literary establishment. Shy, with a slight stammer, she veered from gauche to wildly outspoken. After a reading by in 1968 she buttonholed AS Byatt, who recalled: “This very disagreeable woman stomped up to me and she said, ‘My name’s Angela Carter … and I wanted to stop and tell you that the sort of thing you’re doing is no good at all.’” The “sort of thing” she meant was the in which “people drink tea and commit adultery”."

"Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them."

"My work cuts like a steel blade at the base of a man's penis."

"A book is simply the container of an idea—like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters."

"Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people."

"Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual."

"I'm interested in the division that Judeo-Christianity has made between human nature and animal nature. None of the other great faiths in the world have got quite that division between us and them. None of the others has made this enormous division between birds and beasts who, as Darwin said, would have developed consciences if they'd had the chance, and us. I think it's one of the scars in Western Europe. I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates."

"Women's sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism."