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Who Are We? And To Me That's The Essential Question That's Always Been In Science Fiction. A Lot Of Science Fiction Stories Are - At Their Very Best - Evocations Of That Question. When We Look Up At The Night Sky And Wonder, "is There Anyone Else Out There?" We're Also Asking Who We Are We In Relation To Them.

-David Gerrold

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Who Are We? And

David Gerrold

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Who Are We? And To Me That's The Essential Question That's Always Been In Science Fiction. A Lot Of Science Fiction Stories Are - At Their Very Best - Evocations Of That Question. When We Look Up At The Night Sky And Wonder, "is There Anyone Else Out There?" We're Also Asking Who We Are We In Relation To Them.

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Fiction Stories

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To Say That A Writer's Hold On Reality Is Tenuous Is An Understatement-it's Like Saying The Titanic Had A Rough Crossing. Writer's Build Their Own Realities, Move Into Them And Occasionally Send Letters Home. The Only Difference Between A Writer And A Crazy Person Is That A Writer Gets Paid For It.

The Computer Has Evolved Into A Partner, A Tool, And An Environment--not Just In Science Fiction, But In The Public Consciousness As Well. Computers Are No Longer Malevolent Iron Brains That Manufacture Tyrannical And Oppressive Answers; They Are Not A Way To Think, They Are A Place From Which To Think. The Computer Is An Environment In Which Answers Can Be Sought, Created, Manipulated And Developed.

I Have A Very Simple Philosophy Of Life: Kindness. Ferocious, Unrelenting, Ruthless, Committed, Passionate, Kindness. Life Is Sacred Everywhere. We All Have Better Things To Do Than Beat Each Other Up. Arguing For The Exception Is To Invest It With Energy, It's To Negotiate The Loophole. The Commitment To Kindness Must Be Total.

Something Went Klunk. Like A Nickel Dropping In A Soda Machine. One Of Those Small Insights That Explains Everything. This Was Puberty For These Boys. Adolescence. The First Date, The First Kiss, The First Chance To Hold Hands With Someone Special. Delayed, Postponed, A Decade's Worth Of Longing--while Everybody Around You Celebrates Life, You Pretend, Suppress, Inhibit, Deprive Yourself Of You Own Joy--but Finally Ultimately, Eventually, You Find A Place Where You Can Have A Taste Of Everything Denied.

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Great Adventure

The Most Useless Job In The World Is That Of The Critic. That Is A Prejudiced Statement. I Admit It. I'm Prejudiced. I Hate Critics. ... And Now, As The Saying Goes (yesterday, I Couldn't Even Spell Critik), And Now I Are One.

The Single Most Important Lesson Of Effective Communication Is This: Focus On Clarity. Concentrate On Precisions. Don’t Worry About Constructing Beautiful Sentences. Beauty Comes From Meaning, Not Language. Accuracy Is The Most Effective Style Of All.

Imagine Yourself In The Scene. See What There Is To Be Seen. Listen To The Sounds. Touch The World. Smell The Air. Taste It. Use All Of Your Senses. Then Evoke Those Experiences For The Reader. If You Give The Audience The Flavor, They'll Flesh Out The Moment In Their Own Imaginations.

Contentment Is The Continuing Act Of Accepting The Process Of Your Own Life.

Tomorrow Is Going To Be Different Than Yesterday, It's Going To Be A Lot Different.

A Work Of Art Is An Act Of Love. Critics Are Crab Lice.

You Will Find It Easiest To Ride The Avalanche In The Direction It Already Travels.

I Had Always Been Fascinated By The Whole Idea That Australia Was This Different Ecology And That When Rabbits And Prickly Pears And Other Things From Europe Were Introduced Into Australia, They Ran Amok.

You Cannot Avoid Mortality. But You Can Choose Your Way Of Meeting It. And That Is The Most That Any Man Can Hope For.

Who Are We? And To Me That's The Essential Question That's Always Been In Science Fiction. A Lot Of Science Fiction Stories Are - At Their Very Best - Evocations Of That Question. When We Look Up At The Night Sky And Wonder, "is There Anyone Else Out There?" We're Also Asking Who We Are We In Relation To Them.

Fiction Stories

True Genius Can Be Identified By The Fact That Its Expression Changes The World Into Something It Has Never Been Before.

When I Was A Kid, My Favorite Movies Were The George Pal Version Of 'war Of The Worlds,' 'them,' And 'invasion Of The Body Snatchers.' Those Movies Were Scary! They Haunted My Nightmares For Years, So When I Started Writing, I Wanted To Write A Story That Was Just As Big And Just As Scary.

The Avalanche Of Time Sweeps Everything Before It. Every Individual Instant Hurtles Into Oblivion, Drowning Out The Obliteration Of The Instant Immediately Preceding It, And Then It Too Disappears Under The Onslaught Of The Next And The Next And The Next. When The Avalanche Has Shuddered Past For A Long Enough Time, The Perception Of The Past Evolves. Distant Events Grow Beyond Mere History And Take On The Weight Of Legend.

The Secret Of The Universe Is This: The Universe Doesn't Care. That Part Of The Job Is Yours.

Incompetency Fed On Itself.

Theres Two Tiers Of Science Fiction: The Mcdonalds Sci-fi Like Star Trek, Where They Have An Adventure And Solve It Before The Last Commercial, And There Are Books That Once Youve Read, You Never Look At The World The Same Way Again.

Life Is Hard. Then You Die. Then They Throw Dirt In Your Face. Then The Worms Eat You. Be Grateful It Happens In That Order.

The Problem With The Gene Pool Is That There's No Lifeguard.

It's Almost Always Dangerous To Be Right Too Soon.

You Can Tell A Lot About A Civilization By The Quality Of The People Found In Its Jails.

Doesn't Anybody Ever Want To Talk About Anything Else Besides 'star Trek?' There Were 79 Episodes Of The Series; There Were 55 Different Writers. I Was Only One Of Them.

Only People Who Haven't Lived Through A War Advocate It So Eagerly.

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Life Is Full Of Little Surprises. Time Travel Is Full Of Big Ones.

Death Comes Black And Hard, Rushing Down On Me From The Future, With No Possible Chance Of Escape.

Christianity Has Held Back Any Further Advances In Human Consciousness For The Past Thousand Years. And For The Past Century It's Been In Direct Conflict With Its Illegitimate Offspring, Communism (again With A Capital C). Both Ask The Individual To Sacrifice His Self-interest To The Higher Goals Of The Organization. (which Is Okay By Me As Long As It's Voluntary; But As Soon As Either Becomes Too Big - And Takes On That Damned Capital C - They Stop Asking For Cooperation And Start Demanding It.) Any Higher States Of Human Enlightenment Have Been Sacrificed Between These Two Monoliths.

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The Jingling Of A Fat Purse Always Commands The World.

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Morality—like Velocity—is Relative. The Determination Of It Depends On What The Objects Around You Are Doing. All One Can Do Is Measure One's Position In Relation To Them; Never Can One Measure One's Velocity Or Morality In Terms Of Absolutes.

I Have Memories - But Only A Fool Stores His Past In The Future.

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I Think I Exist, Therefore I Exist. I Think.

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Most People Say They Want Justice, But They Don't Really Want Justice. They Want Revenge. They Want To See The Pain Spread Around Equally.

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If You're Passing The Buck, Don't Ask For Change.

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