Larry Niven Quotes

For the new century, back to the moon, back to the future and this time back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet, a manned mission to Mars.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable.

Most of my work is science fiction, with many a spaceship but few cars.

Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that.

But I don't think we'll go there until we go back to the moon and develop a technology base for living and working and transporting ourselves through space.

By the time I'm 40, interplanetary travel will be common. Nobody will want to talk to me at that age, anyway.

Science fiction is a unique literature. Science fiction is the first literature that says, 'Tomorrow is going to be different than yesterday, it's going to be a lot different.'

I don't really see science fiction as fiction. I can imagine colonies on Mars and everything.

A lot of sci-fi shows are very cold, too concerned with hardware.

When I was a kid, I just figured we'd be living on the moon by the year 2000.

I don't know why, but American sci-fi writers seem to focus on the near-future, which has given us Brits a clear run at the most fascinating.

I do like sci-fi, absolutely. I've watched everything from 'Star Trek' to 'Star Wars' to 'Terminator' - the list goes on and on.

Science fiction is the sovereign prophylactic against future shock.

Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.

When you're changing centuries, people get curious about the future.

I truly believe that everything Sci-fi taught me as a child about an efficient and wondrous world will be happening in my lifetime.

Science fiction is about things that plausibly might happen. Grounding my work in the real world helps make that clear.

Most fiction says you may or may not be alive tomorrow; science fiction talks often about the future.

I think that any sort of fantasy or sci fi that is grounded in something that could ostensibly be real - 'Jurassic Park' being my favorite example - is that much more prescient because it means that much more. Maybe one day, what if?

In 1955, when I'd write a science-fiction novel, I'd set it in the year 2000. I realised around 1977 that, 'My God, it's getting exactly like those novels we used to write in the 1950s!' Everything's just turning out to be real.

I wrote this book, '2030,' and I was careful in the book not to overdo the future because I don't think it comes that fast.

Science fiction's power, if it has any, is that it gives us reasonable extrapolations, not wild and woolly stuff.

I'm a fan of hard science fiction, which is science fiction that is possible.

I'm a science-fiction fan. All science fiction ends up being reality.

I was a big fan of sci-fi.