Quotes by Gregory Benford - Page 2

Invoking nature with its implied supremacy ignores that many cultures have fundamentally differing ideas of even what nature is, much less how it should work.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Implied
Supremacy
Cultures
Differing
Fundamentally
Ignores
Invoking
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Seeing the space future through science fiction can be difficult. Much science fiction of the early era, the 1950s through the '70s, took an expansionist view.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Science Fiction
Future Science Space
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One of the laws of nature," Gordon said, "is that half the people have got to be below average.""For a Gaussian distribution, yeah," Cooper said. "Sad, though.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Average
Law
People
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When Joseph Wambaugh writes about the LAPD, you listen because you know he knows the scene. Lots of people write cop novels, but they don't have that authenticity.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Authenticity
Cop
People Know Because
Joseph
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We have a name for people who create universes - they're called gods. There is no greater hubris than to think that we could take the place of godlike implications.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Godlike
Hubris
Implications
Universes
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Dinner at college high table is one of the legendary experiences of England. I could remember keenly each one I had attended; the repartee is sharper than the cutlery.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Dinner
Legendary
Repartee
Attended
Each One
Sharper
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This was the 1940s; there was no television. It was a different age - it was not swamped by media; it was swamped by reality, and storytelling was a very big art where I came from.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Swamped
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Science fiction writers didn't predict the fade-out of NASA's manned space operations, and they weren't prepared with alternative routes to space when that decline became undeniable.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Decline
Fiction Writers
Nasa
Operations
Routes
Science Fiction
Predict
Alternative
Space Science Science Fiction
Science Space Science Fiction
Manned
Science Fiction Writers
Undeniable
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Like the ocean, land plants hold about three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. While oceans take many centuries to exchange this mass with the air, flora take only a few years.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Ocean
Air
Atmosphere
Carbon
Flora
Mass
Centuries
Exchange
Plants
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The Matrix itself is not some external evil, but rather an outcome of our own error, our karmic payoff of past actions. Not merely illusion, it is an allusion to a founding myth of our culture.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Founding
Myth
Payoff
Actions
External
Error
Matrix
Merely
Outcome
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Star Trek's insight lay in the promise of going to the stars together, with well-defined stereotypes who could supply the emotional frame for the potentially jarring truths of these distant places.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Insight
Promise
Distant
Frame
Jarring
Lay
Potentially
Stereotypes
Supply
Trek
Truths
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Will searching for distant messages work? Is there intelligent life out there? The SETI effort is worth continuing, but our common-sense beacons approach seems more likely to answer those questions.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Continuing
Intelligent
Intelligent Life
Messages
Distant
Searching
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Science is like literature, a continuing dialog among diverse and conflicting voices, no one ever wholly right or wholly wrong, but a steady conversation forever provisional and personal and living.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Forever
Literature
Voice
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Our moon was born too small to harbor life. It came from the collision of a Mars-sized world into the primordial Earth. From that colossal crunch spun a disk of rocks that condensed into a satellite.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Collision
Colossal
Crunch
Disk
Moon
Rocks
Spun
Life World Earth
Condensed
Harbor
Primordial
Satellite
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The moon's closeness is a huge advantage: To make it habitable, we would first have to bombard it with water-ice comets, a tricky endeavor best attempted with the many resources waiting on and near Earth.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Advantage
Closeness
Endeavor
Moon
Tricky
Attempted
Habitable
Near
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The thing that most critics miss about Faulkner is that his famous storytelling voice is, in fact, a standard Southern storytelling voice that is typical of the Gulf Coast - Mississippi, Alabama and so on.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Famous
Alabama
Critics
Mississippi
Southern
Typical
Miss
Faulkner
Gulf
Gulf Coast
In Fact
Standard
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Terraforming our moon will take many decades and vast abilities. Before we can begin, we'll have to master the resources of our solar system - especially transporting raw masses over interplanetary distances.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Decades
Moon
Solar System
Distances
Vast
Masses
Raw
Solar
Transporting
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In temperate zones, winter is the best insecticide; it keeps the bugs in check. The tropics enjoy no such respite, so plants there have developed a wide range of alkaloids that kill off nosy insects and animals.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Bugs
Insects
Range
Wide
Winter
Zone
Check
Developed
Plants
Temperate
Wide Range
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Reared in rural southern Alabama, we enjoyed an idyllic Huck Finn boyhood. But education there was casual at best. Our mother and father were high school teachers and challenged the pervasive easy-going ignorance.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Alabama
Boyhood
Casual
Easy Going
Idyllic
Mother And Father
School Teachers
Teachers
Challenged
Pervasive
Rural
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Because I've been a full professor doing research and lecturing at the University of California, I didn't have a lot of time to write, so I have always used my unconscious a great deal to do the really heavy lifting.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
California
Heavy
Lecturing
Lifting
Unconscious
Time Great Always
Great Deal
Professor
University Of California
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My feeling is that science is virtually an unexplored ground. It's very visible - more so all the time - but there's no fiction that tells us how scientists think, and they really don't think the way that other people do.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Unexplored
Visible
Science Time People
Scientists
Virtually
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Electromagnetic theory and experiment gave us the telephone, radio, TV, computers, and made the internal combustion engine practical - thus, the car and airplane, leading inevitably to the rocket and outer-space exploration.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Car
Airplane
Combustion
Exploration
Made
Radio
Theory
Tv
Electromagnetic
Engine
Experiment
Gave
Inevitably
Internal
Leading
Practical
Rocket
Telephone
Thus
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Indeed, the history of 20th century physics was in large measure about how to avoid the infinities that crop up in particle theory and cosmology. The idea of point particles is convenient but leads to profound, puzzling troubles.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Century
Convenient
Cosmology
Physics
Profound
Puzzling
Theory
Avoid
Crop
Indeed
Large
Large Measure
Measure
Particle
Troubles
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It turns out that if you optimize the performance of a car and of an airplane, they are very far away in terms of mechanical features. So you can make a flying car. But they are not very good planes, and they are not very good cars.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Airplane
Far Away
Features
Flying
Planes
Turns
Mechanical
Optimize
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In science fiction, basic doubts featured prominently in the worlds of Philip K. Dick. I knew Phil for 25 years, and he was always getting onto me, a scientist. He was a great fan of quantum uncertainty, epistemology in science, the lot.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Epistemology
Quantum
Science Fiction
Uncertainty
Science Great Me
Basic
Fan
Doubts
Featured
Onto
Phil
Worlds
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As fandom grew more variegated, genzines reflected a broadening of interests, carrying personal columns of humor and reflection, science articles, amateur fiction, stylish gossip, and inevitably, thoughtful pieces on the future of fandom.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Articles
Columns
Gossip
Stylish
Thoughtful
Amateur
Broadening
Carrying
Inevitably
Reflected
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The common liberal orthodoxy that living close to the land leads to eco-awareness is historically naive, considering that Mesopotamia, northern Africa, and the Mayan civilization were ruined by people who had lived there quite a long while.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Considering
Orthodoxy
Ruined
Historically
Leads
Liberal
Northern
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Very little useful science got done in the space station. NASA never did the experiments needed to develop the technologies required for a genuine interplanetary expedition: centrifugal gravity to avoid bodily harm and a truly closed biosphere.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Experiments
Genuine
Gravity
Harm
Nasa
Bodily
Closed
Expedition
Required
Space Station
Technologies
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Enzymes - plainly the most important biotechnology of our era - already permeate many industrial processes. Unlike fossil fuels, they carry chemical programming which drives complex reactions, are renewable, and work at ordinary pressures and temperatures.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Biotechnology
Ordinary
Reactions
Carry
Chemical
Complex
Drives
Fossil
Fossil Fuels
Fuels
Unlike
Industrial
Plainly
Pressures
Processes
Renewable
Temperatures
The Most Important
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To us large creatures, space-time is like the sea seen from an ocean liner, smooth and serene. Up close, though, on tiny scales, it's waves and bubbles. At extremely fine scales, pockets and bubbles of space-time can form at random, sputtering into being, then dissolving.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Ocean
Bubbles
Pockets
Scales
Sea
Serene
Tiny
Waves
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As we all saw in grade school, once you learn how to read a book, somebody is going to want to write one - that's how authors are made. Once we know how to read our own genetic code, someone is going to want to rewrite that 'text,' tinker with traits - play God, some would say.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Book
Code
Traits
Authors
Genetic
Grade
Grade School
Saw
Rewrite
Text
Tinker
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It really helps if you know your subject matter immediately. I find that enormously useful because then you can concentrate on all the usual novelistic things - the character, the plot and so forth - and you don't have to spend an enormous amount of time learning another trade, essentially.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Enormous
Plot
Subject Matter
Usual
Essentially
Forth
Immediately
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Virtuality - connection without proximity - is a major attraction in both fandom and the Net. Nobody knows you're a dog through the U.S. mail, either. Fans could be utterly different in their fanzine persona, which may be why both fandom and the Net were invented by individualistic Americans.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Attraction
Individualistic
Mail
Persona
Proximity
Connection
Net
Utterly
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At the end of the day, I sit down for about five minutes and review all the problems I'm working on, research problems or writing problems, and I go to sleep. Then when I wake up in the morning, I've trained myself to not open my eyes and to just lie there and recall the problems and see if there's anything there.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Wake Up
End Of The Day
Recall
Review
Trained
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The simplest way to remove carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is to grow plants - preferably trees, since they tie up more of the gas in cellulose, meaning it will not return to the air within a season or two. Plants build themselves out of air and water, taking only a tiny fraction of their mass from the soil.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Carbon
Carbon Dioxide
Gas
Mass
Remove
Return
Simplest
Soil
Fraction
Greenhouse
Plants
Tie
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You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life's pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with - no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Everyday
Ignorance
Pain
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In coastal waters rich in runoff, plankton can swarm densely, a million in a drop of water. They color the sea brown and green where deltas form from big rivers, or cities dump their sewage. Tiny yet hugely important, plankton govern how well the sea harvests the sun's bounty, and so are the foundation of the ocean's food chain.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Ocean
Bounty
Brown
Cities
Coastal
Color
Food Chain
Green
Rich
Rivers
Sea
Sewage
Sun
Tiny
Water
Chain
Drop
Govern
Hugely
Million
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SF is a controlled way to think and dream about the future. An integration of the mood and attitude of science (the objective universe) with the fears and hopes that spring from the unconscious. Anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out. Nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Dream
Attitude
Spring
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DNA sequencing opens vast ethical issues. We shall be able to know who has defective genes. What will it mean when we can be sure we're not all born equal? Worked out, the implications will scare a lot of people. Insurance companies will not want to cover those with a genetic predisposition to illness, for example. Here lurk myriad lawsuits.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Defective
Dna
Ethical
Genes
Illness
Implications
Insurance Companies
Scare
Sequencing
People Will Know
People Will Born
Cover
Vast
For Example
People Born Will
Insurance
Lawsuits
Myriad
Opens
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Jeff Carver is a hard sf writer who gets it right-his science and his people are equally convincing. NEPTUNE CROSSING combines his strengths, from a chilling look at alien machine intelligence, to cutting-edge chaos theory, to the pangs of finite humans in the face of the infinite. If you like intriguing ideas delivered in an exciting plot, this is your meat.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Cutting
Ideas
People
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Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Space
Risk
Suicide
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There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities - potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry - that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.
Gregory Benford / Fictioneer
Iron
Math
Real
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Gregory Benford Quotes - Page 2

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