Stanley Schmidt Quotes

20 quotes in 432 categories

• Don't mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion - many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin.
• I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other…
• Its limitations are those of the physical universe: it won't let you play with some really wild ideas that aren't possible, but are fun to…
• Usually if nobody hates a piece, nobody loves it, either; and a magazine which sets itself the goal of provoking thought is not doing its…
• There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of…
• There are a significant number of people who appreciate what we do, and most of them gravitate to Analog because this is where they can…
• When something hasn't been around much for a while, and one example of it turns up and catches people's eyes, they go looking for more…
• This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.
• I think the international appeal of SF is quite understandable since the kinds of people who like to read it, are, by the nature of…
• Ideally, I'd like every issue to include a diverse group of stories that meet the qualifications sketched above, but covering a wide range of specific…
• What SF can do better than anything else is show us the range of our possible futures, and what we can do to realize the…
• Of course, the way writers think about those things is almost certain to be affected by their own cultural background, and it would be hard…
• As for sticking strictly to presently known science, I will simply point out that we have already experienced at least two major revolutions in science…
• Through our entire history we have become accustomed to pushing [animals] around in ways dictated by our own wants and needs without much regard for…
• And, of course, some SF is set close enough to here and now that Anglo and European do apply. Since many of the writers come…
• It's easy to imagine ways the future can be ugly and depressing. It's harder, but more worthwhile, to imagine plausible ways we can make it…
• It's most presumptuous to believe we already know all the answers and will never get any more big surprises.
• Blaming society makes it awfully easy for a person of weak character to shrug off his own responsibility for his actions.
• Resist the temptation to try to use dazzling style to conceal weakness of substance.
• Some of the biggest changes that have happened are behind the scenes, in the way we produce the magazine. E.g., much of our production has…

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