David Brin Quotes

If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?

Science has learned recently that contempt and indignation are addictive mental states. I mean physically and chemically addictive. Literally! People who are self-righteous a lot are apparently doping themselves rhythmically with auto-secreted surges of dopamine, endorphins and enkephalins. Didn't you ever ask yourself why indignation feels so good?

Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy... in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of Nature

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some 'norm'), the freedom to learn from experience ... to be influenced by reasonable arguments ... and the appeal to the emotions ... and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

I find humans tremendously interesting

Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.

Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.