Fiction Quotes by David Brin

11 Fiction quotes by David Brin

David Brin’s take on fiction comes through clearly in this short set of eleven excerpts. Each line distills a piece of his thought, giving you a compact window into how he perceives narrative, imagination, and the craft of writing.

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Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

David Brin

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Science fiction is the field that explores how change can affect us, for well or ill.

David Brin

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Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does…

David Brin

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As a fellow science fiction author, Heinlein largely raised me, and I resent it when some folks lazily dismiss Heinlein as a…

David Brin

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The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers - it's that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.

David Brin

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Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a…

David Brin

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There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were…

David Brin

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Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of…

David Brin

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Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres…

David Brin

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I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that…

David Brin

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“As sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon said, 90 percent of everything is crap. But science fiction has not been forgiven for its crap.…

David Brin

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Beware of self-indulgence. The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must…

David Brin

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Anything done in secret is more likely to result in terrible errors.

David Brin

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“Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin…

David Brin

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Strutting and preening is, in fact, the surest sign of an inferiority complex.

David Brin

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“We aren’t a curse upon the world. We are her new eyes. Her brain, testes, ovaries . . . her ambition and her heart.…

David Brin

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If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

David Brin

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Historically, central planners have generally done a poor job of managing economic resources - this we've known since the time of the Pharaohs.

David Brin

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A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.

David Brin

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Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.

David Brin

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It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded.…

David Brin

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Tragedies such as Nevil Shute's 'On the Beach' and Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr Strangelove' are so powerful because there's an underlying assumption that this did…

David Brin

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In contrast, markets - oft mythologized as "natural" are the most unnatural things going. Libertarians will tell you "market laws are laws of nature",…

David Brin

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