fictional technology Quotes

[Science fiction is] that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesised on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin. It is distinguished from pure fantasy by its need to achieve verisimilitude and win the 'willing suspension of disbelief' through scientific plausibility.

It really was not that difficult a process, because I was playing [Data from Star Trek] something that doesn't exist. So it was really based on... Imagination was the key element in that, and whatever I could think of, I could do, because there was no precedent for it. It wasn't like someone was going to say, "Well, an android would never do that." They didn't know!

Science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be.

If you watch a movie from between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1970s, whenever anyone steps out in a white lab coat, they're there to offer a solution. They're there to tell you how the laser's going to save the day. They're going to give you James Bond's array of tools. After about 1975, whenever the man in the white lab coat steps out, it's to come up with some crazy idea that's going to bring ruin on everybody. "Let's clone dinosaurs!" And the last we see of him is disappearing down the gullet of the Tyrannosaurus rex.

I define science fiction as fiction in which things happen that are not possible today - that depend, for instance, on advanced space travel, time travel, the discovery of green monsters on other planets or galaxies, or that contain various technologies we have not yet developed.

I can't get my head around the fact that the technology of the first two movies, which are forty years prior to Star Wars, is so much better than any technology they had in Star Wars!

The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.

There would be no Star Trek unless there were transporter malfunctions.

Rule number one for the writers when we committed to the jump was: no hoverboards. No one is allowed to pitch that everyone is on hoverboards. It's going to be very very gently sci-fi.

I'm not criticizing the science in Star Wars. That's a waste of everybody's time.