Jack Williamson

He was a strong man in wise enough to realize that beyond power itself is the power of using it wisely.

Science fiction, as I like to define it, is fiction based on the imagined exploration of scientific possibility. The distinction from fantasy—or from other sorts of fantasy—lies in the word possibility.

“I wonder—?” whispered April Bell, her long eyes narrowed and dark. “I wonder what they really found?”
“Whatever it is,” breathed Barbee, “the find doesn’t seem to have made them very happy. A fundamentalist might think they had stumbled into hell.”
“No,” the girl said, “men aren’t that much afraid of hell.”

Power is habit-forming. We grew addicted to it. Few things survive the centuries’ slow decay: senses grow dull; passions grow weak; and ideals die. Only the taste for power lives on as an excuse for survival.

The mystery of it gets me. The builders of the trilithons and the road were high-tech wizards, but their skills didn’t save them. I’ve been wondering how they died. Maybe they got too good at the science of war.

SF still appeals to the young, as always, because so much of it is set in the futures in which they will be living.

Horn sat in the near darkness staring at eight floating choices and reflected how inevitability had channeled his actions since he had left the Cluster. Since he had accepted the money from the voice in the darkness, there had been only one step to take, and he had taken it; one path to follow, and he had followed it. Beyond, it had seemed, there would be choice; never now.
So it had let him on, step by step, comforted by the self-nurtured illusion of free will, guided subtly, unyieldingly, by the iron tube of determinism. Once it started, he never had a chance to turn back.

The criticism of SF has tapped rich new vines for researchers, and I can think of writers who seem to be trying harder to impress the critics than to please their readers. I’m afraid the critical tail has begun to wag the creative dog.

“Magic.” He shot photos and shook his head. “Pure magic, till we learn enough to understand it.”

Civilization.…
Like everything else, it has a price. The down payment is freedom. For the privilege of living together, men surrender the right to do as they please; they make laws and restrict themselves within them.
When civilization is conferred from outside, the price is even steeper: someone else makes the laws.

He certainly didn’t feel insane, he reflected—but then did any lunatic, ever?

And introvert is one of the harmless scientific terms he used to use when he was really writing about witches.

Conquerors live by conquest; the first failure is a signal for the conquered to rise against them.

“That’s a cynical viewpoint,” Horn said slowly.
“I’m an old man. I can afford no longer the luxury of ideals. If I am to achieve results recognizable within my few remaining years, I must be practical.”

Yet there was a pattern, and the fact that Horn could find it was a commentary upon empire. Mass government is government by rule and regulation. Obedience and conformity are overriding virtues; initiative is punished more often than rewarded. There are prescribed procedures for conducting a search, and no man can be punished for choosing rules over reality.