“In Hamilton's The Universe Wreckers... it was in that novel that, for the first time, I learned Neptune had a satellite named Triton... It was from The Drums of Tapajos that I first learned there was a Mato Grosso area in the Amazon basin. It was from The Black Star Passes and other stories by John W. Campbell that I first heard of relativity.The pleasure of reading about such things in the dramatic and fascinating form of science fiction gave me a push toward science that was irresistible. It was science fiction that made me want to be a scientist strongly enough to eventually make me one.That is not to say that science fiction stories can be completely trusted as a source of specific knowledge... However, the misguidings of science fiction can be unlearned. Sometimes the unlearning process is not easy, but it is a low price to pay for the gift of fascination over science.”

“Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world.”

“Science fiction inspires scientists, but it doesn't exist to dictate what our future should look like. Great science fiction is fun to read and it makes you think, period. Claiming anything more than that is dicey. Grand visions of the future were more prevalent in the golden-age science fiction, but all fiction is a reflection of the current times. As science moves more quickly, the horizon of science fiction tends to recede closer to the present.”

“When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, [and] part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written.”

“Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.”

“Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.”