Famous Sci Fi Quotes

I’ve worn Niki’s pants for two days now. I thought a third day in the same clothes might be pushing it.” Ian shrugged with indifference. “It might send Derian through the roof, but it doesn’t bother me. Wear what you want to wear.” Eena wrinkled her nose at him. “Do you really feel that way or are you trying to appear more laissez-faire than Derian?” “More laissez-faire?” “Yes. That’s a real word.” “Two words actually,” he grinned. “Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui même!" He coated the words with a heavy French accent. Eena gawked at him. “Since when do you speak French?” “I don’t.” Ian chuckled. “But I did do some research in world history the year I followed you around on Earth. Physics was a joke, but history—that I found fascinating.” Slapping a hand against her chest, Eena exclaimed, “I can’t believe it! Unbeknownst to me, Ian actually studied something in high school other than the library’s collection of sci-fi paperbacks!” He grimaced at her exaggerated performance before defending his preferred choice of reading material. “Hey, popular literature is a valuable and enlightening form of world history. You would know that if you read a book or two.” She ignored his reproach and asked with curiosity, “What exactly did you say?” “In French?” “Duh, yes.” “Don’t ‘duh’ me, you could easily have been referring to my remark about enlightening literature. I know the value of a good book is hard for you to comprehend.” He grinned crookedly at her look of offense and then moved into an English translation of his French quote. “Let it do and let it pass, the world goes on by itself.” “Hmm. And where did that saying come from?” Ian delivered his answer with a surprisingly straight face. “That is what the French Monarch said when his queen began dressing casually. The French revolution started one week following that famous declaration, right after the queen was beheaded by the rest of the aristocracy in her favorite pair of scroungy jeans.” “You are such a brazen-tongued liar!

Plenty of his classmates were drafted into the Fleet when the Forger War broke out, just like he was. But none of them became galaxy-famous war heroes when they were still teenagers. Dash hadn’t aspired to much before the war started, so he wasn’t sure how to aspire to anything at all once it ended.

by refusing to repeat it, much to the despair of their record companies. Both wrote gorgeous sci-fi ballads blatantly inspired by 2001—“Space Oddity” and “After the Gold Rush.” Both did classic songs about imperialism that name-checked Marlon Brando—“China Girl” and “Pocahontas.” Both were prodigiously prolific even when they were trying to eat Peru through their nostrils. They were mutual fans, though they floundered when they tried to copy each other (Trans and Tin Machine). Both sang their fears of losing their youth when they were still basically kids; both aged mysteriously well. Neither ever did anything remotely sane. But there’s a key difference: Bowie liked working with smart people, whereas Young always liked working with . . . well, let’s go ahead and call them “not quite as smart as Neil Young” people. Young made his most famous music with two backing groups—the awesomely inept Crazy Horse and the expensively addled CSN—whose collective IQ barely leaves room temperature. He knows they’re not going to challenge him with ideas of their own, so he knows how to use them—brilliantly in the first case, lucratively in the second. But Bowie never made any of his memorable music that way—he always preferred collaborating with (and stealing from) artists who knew tricks he didn’t know, well educated in musical worlds where he was just a visitor. Just look at the guitarists he worked with: Carlos Alomar from James Brown’s band vs. Robert Fripp from King Crimson. Stevie Ray Vaughan from Texas vs. Mick Ronson from Hull. Adrian Belew from Kentucky vs. Earl Slick from Brooklyn. Nile Rodgers. Peter Frampton. Ricky Gardiner, who played all that fantastic fuzz guitar on Low (and who made the mistake of demanding a raise, which is why he dropped out of the story so fast). Together, Young and Bowie laid claim to a jilted generation left high and dry by the dashed hippie dreams. “The

You might think the alien worlds in the original Star Trek look fake. You might think the blinky lights on those old sets are silly. You might not love those oh-so-tight 1960s velour uniforms. But nobody thinks Spock’s pointed ears look bad. The ears are legit. It’s one of those classic Hollywood tricks that should be hugely impressive but somehow isn’t praised enough. Whether the stoic Vulcan is played by Leonard Nimoy, Zachary Quinto, or Ethan Peck, the applause for the most famous fake alien ears is mostly absent. And that’s because the ears work. Praising Spock’s ears would be like praising James Bond’s tailor; you expect Spock to look that way. The believability of Spock’s ears allowed the characters—and by extension the earliest Star Trek—to prevent the entire series from becoming, as Leonard Nimoy had worried in 1964, “a bad sci-fi joke.

Doe pipes up, “Allow me to present that celebrated Greek philosopher and authority, Anonymous.” “What’s the name?” “Anonymous,” Doe repeats. “Don’t I hear this name before?” I mutter. Anonymous hurls me a sneer. “Everyone reads my works.” “What do you write for,” I inquire, “The Racing Form?” “Not lately. Though once in a while I do give out a few hot tips.” “Then I do not run across your stuff, I guess. Because all I read is the sporting papers and what I find written on the walls of phone booths.” “I write all that,” Anonymous tells me. “Though I am more famous for my poetry and quotations.