Frederik Pohl

I don't think the scientific method and the science fictional method are really analogous. The thing about them is that neither is really practiced very much, at least not consciously. But the fact that they are methodical does relate them. ”

You look at the world around you, and you take it apart into all its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens. ”

My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method. ”

The big new development in my life is, when I turned 80, I decided I no longer have to do four pages a day. For me, it's like retiring. ”

I was thinking of writing a little foreword saying that history is, after all, based on people's recollections, which change with time. ”

I'm doing a book, 'Chasing Science,' about the pleasures of science as a spectator sport. ”

That's the method: restructure the world we live in in some way, then see what happens. ”

The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. ”

A large fraction of the most interesting scientists have read a lot of SF at one time or another, either early enough that it may have played a part in their becoming scientists or at some later date just because they liked the ideas. ”

In terms of stories I would buy for a science fiction magazine, if they take place in the future, that might do it. ”