Stanley Schmidt Quotes & Sayings

“It's most presumptuous to believe we already know all the answers and will never get any more big surprises.”

“Usually if nobody hates a piece, nobody loves it, either; and a magazine which sets itself the goal of provoking thought is not doing its job if everybody agrees with what it does.”

“It's easy to imagine ways the future can be ugly and depressing. It's harder, but more worthwhile, to imagine plausible ways we can make it better.”

“There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments.”

“When something hasn't been around much for a while, and one example of it turns up and catches people's eyes, they go looking for more like it - until they get tired of it again.”

“Ideally, I'd like every issue to include a diverse group of stories that meet the qualifications sketched above, but covering a wide range of specific matter and flavour.”

“I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion.”

“And, of course, some SF is set close enough to here and now that Anglo and European do apply. Since many of the writers come from those backgrounds, so does much of the fiction.”

“As for sticking strictly to presently known science, I will simply point out that we have already experienced at least two major revolutions in science in this century alone.”

“I think the international appeal of SF is quite understandable since the kinds of people who like to read it, are, by the nature of the beast, interested in other cultures, of which other nations on Earth are the closest available example.”