I'm doing a book, 'Chasing Science,' about the pleasures of science as a spectator sport. Frederik Pohl More Quotes by Frederik Pohl More Quotes From Frederik Pohl A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. Frederik Pohl fiction-stories able jam You can't really predict the future. All you can do is invent it. Frederik Pohl can-do You don't think progress goes in a straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating, maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell's own time to get started, but when it goes it goes like a bomb. Frederik Pohl curves science thinking That's really what SF is all about, you know: the big reality that pervades the real world we live in: the reality of change. Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have. Frederik Pohl real literature fiction For someone to be taken seriously it was valuable to have the appearance of someone who deserved to be taken seriously. Frederik Pohl valuable taken appearance I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter - now, computer - lit up a cigarette. Frederik Pohl block typewriters morning If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want. Frederik Pohl rays writing trying On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about a thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love story. Frederik Pohl girl boys years The future depicted in a good SF story ought to be in fact possible, or at least plausible. That means that the writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true... and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you. Frederik Pohl stories mean looks Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad. Frederik Pohl advertising fantasy people The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. Frederik Pohl dissection method fiction The big new development in my life is, when I turned 80, I decided I no longer have to do four pages a day. For me, it's like retiring. Frederik Pohl four development new-day You can't trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it. Frederik Pohl profession long-ago reason It's clear that science and science fiction have overlapping populations. Frederik Pohl population clear fiction That's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die. Frederik Pohl diploma graduates life People as me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research. Frederik Pohl research writing people I was thinking of writing a little foreword saying that history is, after all, based on people's recollections, which change with time. Frederik Pohl writing people thinking I'm pretty catholic about what constitutes science fiction. Frederik Pohl science-fiction catholic fiction They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind. Frederik Pohl giving-up choices two My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method. Frederik Pohl different literature fiction
