1
There is no indisputable proof for the big bang, " said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?Robert J. Sawyer
2
It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence, " said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.Robert J. Sawyer
3
No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?Robert J. Sawyer
4
That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another – that, in fact, has never been observed.Robert J. Sawyer
5
¨Kayla replied, ´And we---or the p-zeds, at any rate---copy indiscriminately, without reflection. And if the person they´re coyping is a psychopath, then their behavior ends up being de facto psychopathic, too.´ ¨Robert J. Sawyer
6
Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.Robert J. Sawyer
7
Gone. and it was completely. Everyone I'd every known, every place I'd ever been. My Mother. My father. Rebecca. Out of site. Out of mind.Robert J. Sawyer
8
I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.Robert J. Sawyer
9
If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught?Robert J. Sawyer
10
Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn’t exist at all: awareness. Nothing more than that. Just awareness–a vague, ethereal sense of being. Being . . but not becoming. No marking of time, no past or future–only an endless, featureless now, and, just barely there in that boundless moment, inchoate and raw, the dawning of perception . .Robert J. Sawyer
11
The sky above the island was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel–which is to say it was a bright, cheery blue.Robert J. Sawyer
12
All right, ” he said. “Since you asked, Webmind is an emergent quantum-computational system based on a stable null-sigma condensate that resists decoherence thanks to constructive feedback loops.” He turned to the blackboard, scooped up a piece of chalk, and began writing rapidly. “See, ” he said, “using Dirac notation, if we let Webmind’s default conscious state be represented by a bra of phi and a ket of psi, then this would be the einselected basis.” His chalk flew across the board again. “Now, we can get the vector basis of the total combined Webmind alpha-state consciousness.. .Robert J. Sawyer
13
He had a collection of science-fiction films on DVD and Blu-ray discs, and although he said he’d seen most of them before, Caitlin was surprised to discover how many of the cases were still shrink-wrapped. “Why’d you buy them if you weren’t going to watch them?” she asked. He looked at the tall, thin cabinets that contained the movies and seemed to ponder the question. “My childhood was on sale, ” he said at last, “so I bought it. .Robert J. Sawyer
14
And Wolfram knows about cellular automata?” “Oh, my goodness, yes, ” said Anna. “He wrote a book you could kill a man with–twelve hundred pages–called A New Kind of Science. It’s all about them.” “We should totally ask him what he thinks! ” Caitlin said.Robert J. Sawyer
15
Mr. Lockery–my biology teacher–says if dinosaurs were magically brought forward in time today, we’d have nothing to worry about. Dogs, wolves, and bears would make short work of tyrannosaurs.” She nodded at Schrödinger, who was now padding across the floor in the opposite direction. “Big cats, too. They’re faster, tougher, and brighter than anything that existed seventy million years ago. Everything is always ramping up, always escalating.Robert J. Sawyer
16
I am part of a minority that is deeply misunderstood. People have very confused ideas about us. Many are frightened of us. I've even heard it said that many people wouldn't want their daughters or sons to marry one of us, and I know of people who have been denied jobs or promotions because they share this trait with me. But being what I am does not make me bad; being what I am does not make me dangerous; being what I am does not mean I don't love, or hurt, or have a sense of humor. My name is Malclom Decter, and I'm here today to tell the whole world what I am.. I am an atheist. .Robert J. Sawyer
17
Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.Robert J. Sawyer
18
George Orwell's science-fiction classic 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' wasn't a failure because the future it predicted failed to come to pass. Rather, it was a resounding success because it helped us prevent that future.Robert J. Sawyer
19
All the things that made us basically nasty, rapacious, competitive as a species are not necessarily hard-coded into whatever passes for the DNA of artificial intelligence.Robert J. Sawyer
20
It's possible that there is a guiding intelligence in our universe. I don't see a lot of personal evidence for an interventionist-on-an-individual-basis-deity. I have friends who very much do believe in that. But I don't.Robert J. Sawyer
21
You can't be a 21st-century science fiction writer writing about Mars without doing tips of the hat to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Ray Bradbury, to H.G. Wells, to the guys who first put it in the public imagination that Mars was an exciting place.Robert J. Sawyer
22
Regrettably, with '2001' having a title that had a year in it, science fiction essentially set itself up in the public's imagination as saying, 'Here's what you get if you wait to that year.' Well, we all waited till that year, and we didn't get anything at all like that.Robert J. Sawyer
23
When we have machines that are as intelligent - and then twice as intelligent - as we are, there is no reason why that relationship cannot be synergistic rather than antagonistic.Robert J. Sawyer