Brian Aldiss
English writer of general fiction and science fiction.
He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of population was such that reproduction had to be strict, controlled. Childbirth required government permission. For this moment, they had waited four years. Incoherently they cried their delight.
I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.
An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.
One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backward in time.
If we can see our difficulties, there is a way of resolving them, or the hope of a way.
Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.
Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction — it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.
I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth.
“Sounds to me as if you want journalists,” Timberlane said.
“No, sir, we require steady men with integrity. This is not a scoop, it’s a way of life.”
However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
The midwife bustled out to the four in the antechamber and announced that the Almighty (who had recently become a Protestant) had seen fit to bless milady with a son.
"There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!"
I’ve no objection to morality, except that it’s obsolete.
It’s a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn’t; it’s something that goes on inside us.
It (i. e., his look) held the fatal mixture of stupidity and cunning that lurks at the bottom of all evil.
As long as the chromosome reproduced itself in sufficient dominance, he was immortal! To him, in an unscientific age, the problem did not present itself quite like that; but he realized that there was a trait to be kept in the family.
Synthetic life-forms were less than ten years old, the old android mechanicals less than sixteen; the faults of their systems were still being ironed out, year by year.
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.
Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.
Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.