hugo-award-winners

"As you get older, all those dumb clichés, they’re all true. You only have a certain amount of time left, and you should only spend it doing the things that you want to do."

"It's not painless – there's a lot of struggle with all the identity stuff you go through. But we were saying you can count on one hand people whose parents achieved at a very high level and whose children also achieved. So it definitely binds us and I think that's why we enjoy working together. Our heads aren't swelled about it."

"The old have nothing to pace themselves for, she’d say. This is the final sprint. Run. Run. See how far you can get before you fall."

"We need what we need. Judging ourselves doesn’t change it. Sometimes a hug and a cookie right now mean more than a grand gesture at some indeterminate point in the future."

"Any government founded on a political or religious agenda more elaborate than “protect the weak, temper the strong” is doomed to tyranny."

"“Cultural hegemony is based on conformity,” he said, after a pause long enough that she had expected to go unanswered. “Siege mentality. Look at oppressed philosophies, religions—or religions that cast themselves as oppressed to encourage that kind of defensiveness. Logic has no pull. What the lizard brain wants, the monkey brain justifies, and when things are scary, anything different is the enemy. Can come up with a hundred pseudological reasons why, but they all boil down to one thing: if you aren’t one of us, you’re one of them.”"

"Depression is realism."

"Kusanagi-Jones was long past feeling guilt about lying. Conscience was one of the first things to go. If he’d ever had much of one to begin with, the job had burned it out."

"We claim the dignity of age, she thought, but the truth is, age leaves us without any dignity at all."

"The world is full of the markers of abandoned empires, from Hadrian’s Wall to the Great Wall of China, from the remnants of the one in Arizona to the remnants of the one in Berlin."

"“Hypocrite,” she said. But she laughed. “Doesn’t it get tiring being so damned morally superior all the time?”"

"He wouldn’t be much of a diplomat if he couldn’t lie with a straight face."

"Strike two for Utopia. The problem with the damned things always comes when you try to introduce actual people into your philosophical constructs."

"“You ever needed to disprove the existence of a Creator God,” he said, “the miracle of efficiency that the human body isn’t would be a fucking good place to start.”"

"There were idiots on every planet who considered possession more important than morality."

"Age had not yet defeated her on all fronts, though it was a war of attrition she knew she was fated to lose."

"And I admit, I don’t like dying very much myself. But I look forward to Death herself, once the dying is over."

"I said, “It just seems weird that I’m in bed with somebody I’ve never met.” As I said it I realized how foolish it was. Anytime you’re in bed with somebody, you’re in bed with everybody who came before you—everybody who hurt them, healed them, shaped them. All those ghosts are in the room."

"“Kill or be killed,” Vincent said, next best thing to a mantra."

"While it is true that notoriety offers certain benefits, it is not by any means confirmed that those benefits compensate for the disadvantages."

"Can you imagine a planet full of assholes who used to just…cut down trees?"

"If someone says Hugo voters are trying to pick the best stories of the year, you can find someone else who’ll say it’s just a popularity award. The enthusiast will point out growing participation has produced record–breaking numbers of Hugo voters. The cynic will dismiss that number as trivially small. But just now the only thing anyone can say about the future of the Hugos is that it’s unlikely to resemble the past; even idealists and cynics have to agree on that."

"Who wills, Can. Who tries, Does. Who loves, Lives."

"Drummer, beat, and piper, blow, Harper, strike, and soldier, go. Free the flame and sear the grasses Till the dawning Red Star passes."

"Mostly I'm telling people that they don't have to be victims. They can be survivors but I don't as a rule put "messages" in my writing."

"Exchange information, learn to speak sensibly about any subject, learn to express your thoughts, accept new ones, examine them, analyze. Think objectively. Think toward the future."

"When bad fortune occurs, the unresourceful, unimaginative man looks about him to attach the blame to someone else; the resolute accepts misfortune and endeavors to survive, mature, and improve because of it."

"Quantitative change eventually gives way to qualitative change."

"That humans will biologically alter themselves is inevitable, which makes life sciences the most terrifying of the sciences."

"Exploring the secrets of the universe is the basic instinct of all intelligent life."

"The products of modern science have already surpassed the wonders of magic."

"It is science fiction’s mission to broaden and deepen people’s minds. If someone on the way home from work at night pauses to look thoughtfully up at the stars for a while because of a sci-fi story they’ve read, then that work is a great success. Unfortunately, our current sci-fi is also benumbed to a considerable extent, and I see two possible reasons. The first is conceptual. There’s an idea that sci-fi, like mainstream literature, is about relationships between people. This idea reduces the universe to nothing but a prop, a set piece, a supporting role. It cannot be denied that this idea has given rise to many excellent works, but sci-fi is at its strongest and most charming when it depicts the relationship between people and the universe. In sci-fi, the universe itself should be a protagonist, as much as any of its characters."

"A professor of philosophy once said that lesson one for freshman in his field should consist of a long, hard look late at night at the stars. I think this would be an even more apt first lesson for aspiring writers of sci-fi."

"It’s an interesting thing, really: The rigorous, science-based predictions of scientists and futurologists and the spirited “flights of fancy” of sci-fi writers are just about equally (in)accurate!"

"Fantasy has been around since antiquity, and there’s been so much of it. The years have taken their toll and depleted some of its imaginative power. The rapid progress of science, on the other hand, constantly infuses fresh blood into the science-fictional imagination. The worlds described in today’s sci-fi are entirely different from those of a few decades ago, whereas today’s fantasy worlds aren’t so different from those of the Middle Ages."

"Of all the unexpected things that might interrupt Chinese science fiction’s development, social unrest has to be the most worrying. I once told readers at a conference that science fiction is the product of leisurely and carefree minds. No one agreed, but I was telling the truth. Only when our lives are stable and quiet can we allow the universe’s catastrophes to fascinate and awe us. If we already live in an environment full of danger, then science fiction won’t interest us. In fact, two of the last three bursts of creative progress that Chinese science fiction underwent were cut short by social unrest, which is lethal to the genre."

"We tend to imagine that readers of fantasy recognize that what they’re reading is make-believe, which is certainly true today, but wasn’t necessarily so in ancient times. People of ages past regarded fantasies and myths as nothing less than fact. Back then, the real world and the world of magic were mixed together as an inseparable whole, and a large part of the appeal of magical fantasy was its perceived realism. Now, its sense of realism is gone for good, which is why modernity can produce only fairy tales, never myths."

"As to the future of humanity, I’m essentially an optimist. I believe that with the advancement of technology, mankind has a hopeful future. But this optimistic view is based on reason: on one hand, whether the future will be bright or be dark depends largely on the choices we make today."

"The glories and obstacles of the past are just a speck compared to the vastness of the future."

"As a child, I witnessed a great deal of violence and persecution as well as social unrest during The Cultural Revolution...This experience has made me understand the complexity of human nature and society—I’ve realized that the future of human civilization is also full of danger and uncertainty. Such understanding is manifested in my science fiction novels…"

"The world described by modern physics has already moved far beyond our common sense and intuition, even beyond our imagination, and this is, of course, the richest resource for science fiction. I’ve tried to turn the magical world as demonstrated by modern physics into vivid stories. Most of my stories were based on and imagined along the lines of physics and cosmology."

"Contemporary China is a complex society in transition. The kinds of technological and social changes that took societies in the west centuries to move through have sometimes been experienced by a mere two generations in China. The anxiety of careening out of balance, of being torn by parts moving too fast and too slow, is felt everywhere."

"In the remote future, when people remember the history of the mid-twentieth century to the present, all of the great events that seemed so momentous in this period will be milled away, leaving little trace, and only two things that we have overlooked will be seen as more and more important: first, humanity took its first step outside the cradle, and second, humanity then took a step backward. The importance of these two events cannot be overestimated."

"In technological terms, space voyages and environmental protections seem different in character, with the former being intense, high speed, and adventurous, with connotations of state-of-the-art technology, while the latter is a gentle green public-service activity, one which, though involving technology, doesn’t give the impression of being as difficult as the former. But that is only an impression. The true situation is: If we want to achieve the present targets for environmental protection, the technology needed is more difficult to develop than that for large-scale interplanetary travel."

"The world of fantasy and myth isn’t really that large. The universe, as depicted in Eastern and Western mythology alike, is hardly ever larger than two astronomical units in radius. The notion of a light-year could never have made it into a myth because such a scale is beyond the capacity of the mythological imagination. The most magnificent deities of the world of magic are dwarfed by the stars of the world of sci-fi, and its most terrible demons pale in comparison to the sci-fi world’s black holes."

"The truth is that sci-fi and fantasy have many more similarities than differences. They have the same goal: both strive to create ethereal, free worlds of the imagination from which readers can derive the shocks and delights of beauty. (Personally, I’ve never thought it’s sci-fi’s job to represent reality or human nature.) The only difference between the two is the source of their imaginings."

"Nostalgia ages people, but science fiction is a literature of youth. Its spirit is the youthful yearning for new worlds, and new ways of living. Mainstream literature is like Chinese baijiu, tasting better as it ages; science fiction, on the other hand, is like tap beer—you’ve got to drink it quick. Read today, even the sci-fi classics seem feeble, not revelatory. The nature of science fiction is to shine brightest in the present, then to be quickly forgotten. But science fiction shouldn’t be afraid of obsolescence. As a literature of innovation, it uses a constant stream of inventions and shocks to hold back obsolescence, like an everlasting fire. Just as ash falls, the flame springs back to life, emitting dazzling light. To accomplish this, it must hold on to its usefulness."

"Mind you, what we are discussing isn’t religion, per se, but religious feeling. This isn’t the feeling someone has toward God—it’s atheistic, and not in the complicated way of Spinoza or whomever. The religious feeling of science fiction is a deep sense of awe at the great mysteries of the universe."

"The cosmos had not chosen humanity after all. In the old timeline, humans had created the apex civilization on earth, but that had been a one-time and accidental chance. In our human conceit, we’d taken the accidental for the inevitable."

"Numbness to the universe is pervasive in society."