“The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller.”
― The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination
― The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination
“SCIENCE FICTION IS OFTEN DESCRIBED, AND EVEN DEFINED, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. “If this goes on, this is what will happen.” A prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.
This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as “escapist,” but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because “it’s so depressing.”
― The Left Hand of Darkness
This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as “escapist,” but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because “it’s so depressing.”
― The Left Hand of Darkness
“No great city has an abundance of parking.”
― Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay
― Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay
“Expecting a lot from people, you do a lot of smiling; Needing many things for yourself, you have many needs to meet; Making plans to do first this, then that, your mind’s full of hopes and fears— From now on, come what may, don’t be like that.”
― The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones: The Practice of View, Meditation, and Action
― The Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones: The Practice of View, Meditation, and Action
J.’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at J.’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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