Joe Haldeman Quotes

The genre of science fiction is a fun house, an amusement park ride, but it's also a problem. The question that's always being indirectly asked is this: 'Just who do we think we are and, further, who do we want to be?'

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

I was always into science fiction as a kid. I loved science and tinkering with things.

We can celebrate how far we've come from our sexist past when women and men are equally represented in the pages of science fiction anthologies.

I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.

I believe that if it were possible to scrap the whole of existing literature, all writers would find themselves inevitably producing something very close to SF ... No other form of fiction has the vocabulary of ideas and images to deal with the present, let alone the future.

I think people do sci-fi a huge disservice by lumping it as some sort of bizarre subculture genre when I think everybody's lives are impacted by sci-fi at some point.

What I love about sci-fi is that every generation's films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future, but it's always based on what we have. Then, as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas.

Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

What I love about sci-fi is that every generation's films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future but it's always based on what we have. Then as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas. You know?

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.

The whole point of science fiction is that you explore the effect of ideas on a society.

In all my science fiction movies, I try to blend the familiar with the futuristic so as not to be too off-putting to the audience. There is always something familiar they can grab onto.

I think science fiction is very bad at prediction.

I think science fiction helps us think about possibilities, to speculate - it helps us look at our society from a different perspective. It lets us look at our mores, using science as the backdrop, as the game changer.

To succeed in the tech industry, you start businesses, make money, and make smart investments. But to succeed in the tech community, you do and build awesome things, are generous with your time and efforts, and make a point of making space for strangers - without any expectation of payback.

To me, science fiction is about the sense of mystery, the sense of awe. Not 'shock and awe', just 'awe.'

I think when science fiction is at its worst, it's just spaceships flying around shooting at each other. There has to be a lot more going on than that... science fiction is about exploring new worlds and new ideas, not about ray guns and action, necessarily.

To my mind, the best SF addresses itself to problems of the here and now, or even to problems which have never been solved and never will be solved - I'm thinking of Philip K. Dick's work here, dealing with questions of reality, for example.

I need to find creative diversity because if I get stuck, I get unhappy.

I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its record for being accurately predictive is really, really poor! If you look at the whole history of science fiction, what people have said is going to happen, what writers have said is going to happen, and what actually happened - it's terrible.

People who love science fiction really do love sex.

Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.

Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything.