When I began to do a little public speaking, one of the questions I heard most often was, "What good is science fiction to Black people?" I was usually asked this by a Black person.. What good is science fiction's thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing, thinking -- whoever "everyone" happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people?. Octavia E. Butler
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe. - Paul Di Filippo
  2. As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored. - Paul Di Filippo
  3. The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate. - Paul Di Filippo
  4. That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding. - Paul Di Filippo
  5. We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques - that working together, by putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant than... - Clifford D. Simak
More Quotes By Octavia E. Butler
  1. Beware:Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.
  2. All that you touch You Change.All that you ChangeChanges you. The only lasting truthis Change.Godis Change.
  3. God is Change.Earthseed: The Books of the LivingLauren Oya Olamina
  4. In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
  5. There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.
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