Neal Stephenson Quotes

I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal.

Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.

For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible.

Science fiction annoyed me because it was like, "Why is the world as it is not enough for you?"

To me, it's science fiction for me to do the things I've been blessed to do in this industry.

[Science fiction is] a specialized type of fantasy, in which the prime assumption usually is a new scientific discovery or invention.

Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.

What science-fiction premises do is it gives you a "what-if" prism to look at the contemporary world with a wack on the side of the head.

The only science fiction I have written is Fahrenheit 451. It's the art of the possible. Science fiction is the art of the possible. It could happen. It has happened.

Science fiction is fantasy with bolts painted on outside.

When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.

In science fiction a fantastic event or development is considered rationally.

I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective.

I quite enjoy science fiction.

Science fiction is one of the smartest genres around because you have to have so much forethought.

Science fiction is really a rather tiny business compared with its giant cousin, which is fantasy.

When I was a child, science fiction was the first source I've found for information. Science fiction was a very very low cultural stream in those days. It was completly below the radar and no one bothered to censurate it.

The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.

I like sci-fi.

Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.

Science fiction is a way that I can go into the abstract, go into the imagination, and audiences are still willing to go along for the ride.

I like sci-fi that is not entirely impossible.

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.'

There are similarities between historical novels and science fiction. Being thrown into the Napoleonic Wars is just as much of a different world as space.