Alastair Reynolds Quotations

When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader.

When I look back at many of the moments of wonder, awe, or terror that I've got from science fiction, it's often been because I've been put in the head of one of the characters.

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word.

I'm always a little bit cautious around invented terminology because so much science fiction is off-putting to the uninitiated. You open up the first page, and it's full of all these made-up words.

I always say that keeping abreast of science should never be seen as a chore. It should be something you do naturally. I don't sit there reading 'New Scientist,' putting post-it notes next to ideas.

I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science and then get my Ph.D., then go aboard and work in the European Space Agency.

I think the danger with using the term 'trilogy' is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader's mind.

I'm still bothered by the threat of nuclear war.

I was never strong at maths, but I eventually got onto a university physics/astronomy course, and that led on to my Ph.D. and eventual employment.

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.

It looked like a biology lesson for gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets.

I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level.

It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.

At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge.

You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.

I really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists.

Without risk in our lives, we're scarcely better than machines ourselves.

Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.

It's an ancient technique known as lying, Khouri.

Victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished.

As the old saying went, the Manhattan Project wasn't built in a day. Or was that Rome? Something to do with Earth, anyway.

Enjoy it, kid. Enjoy feeling that you can make a difference.' Floyd flashed him a smile. 'It won't last for ever.

How did you . . . pass the time?’ Sunday asked. ‘You couldn’t just ching out of it, could you?’ ‘We had a different form of chinging,’ Eunice said. ‘An earlier type of virtual-reality technology, much more robust and completely unaffected by time lag. You may have heard of it. We called it “reading”.

The human capacity for grief. It just isn't capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn't just level off - it just gives up, resets itself to zero.

The cards always look different when it's your turn to play them; loaded with subtly different possibilities.

To see something marvelous with your own eyes-that's wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you'll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold only have an incomplete half of it, and that it won't ever really exist as a whole until you're together, talking or thinking about that moment ...that's worth more than one plus one. It's worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can't even imagine it.

Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.

To be remembered at all is an achievement of sorts.

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West.

I've never had much interest in spinoffery - the idea of writing in someone else's universe generally leaves me cold - but 'Doctor Who' is different. I've grown up with it. It's been part of my life since I was tiny, watching Jon Pertwee on a grainy black and white television in Cornwall and being terrified out of my mind.

I'm not massively fond of right-wing nutters or war criminals.

I'm fascinated by steam engines and with Victorian engineering generally, and as a corollary to that, I'm fascinated by the idea of long-lived technologies.

I'm not a morning person: I can't function until I've had a coffee - or several.

If there's a story I absolutely cannot tell without faster-than-light travel, then I am quite prepared to accept it - even though I don't personally believe it is possible.

I prioritise story over science, but not at the expense of being really stupid about it.

I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel: there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point.

I am playing in a playground that's already been played in. I am always aware that a lot of the furniture in science fiction is second hand.