The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ® Quotes

“the hunter-lust that prodded men to kill something strange or harder to kill or bigger than any man had ever killed before.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“So I proposed to give the people scientific government…a business administration. An administration that would have run the government exactly as a successful businessman runs his business. The people would have resented it if I had told them they didn’t know how to run their affairs. There was only one way to do it…gain control and force it down their throats.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“And I think he actually believes the best way to do it is to gain a dictatorship over the Solar System. That ambition rules everything in his life. It has hardened him and strengthened him. He will crush ruthlessly, without a single qualm, anything that stands in his path. That’s why we’ll have a fight on our hands.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“After a while, after a long while. When Man stops believing that racial loyalty means the right to subjugate all other life. It will come, Ash, and humanity will be greater for it, allied to everything that lives, not an arrogant and fearful master.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“And here and there a human who saw the rightness of the proposition that Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was to his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend, rather than a power-hungry creature that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“But history was something that you couldn’t trust. It was put together wrong, or copied wrong, or misinterpreted, or improved upon by a man with a misplaced imagination. Truth was so hard to keep, myth and fable so easy to breathe into a life that was more acceptable than truth.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“A propagandist doesn’t have to know what he is talking about, just so he talks convincingly”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“For Man had flown too fast, had driven far beyond his physical capacity. Not by strength did he hold his starry outposts, but by something else…by depth of human character, by his colossal conceit, by his ferocious conviction that Man was the greatest living thing the galaxy had spawned. All this in spite of many evidences that he was not…evidence that he cast aside, scornful of any greatness that was not ruthless and aggressive.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“yeah’! Page stopped in front of a smaller room, enclosed by heavy quartz. Inside that room was the great bank of mercury-vapor rectifiers. From them lashed a blue-green glare that splashed against his face and shoulders, painting him in angry, garish color. The glass guarded him from the terrific blast of ultra-violet light that flared from the pool of shimmering molten metal, a terrible emanation that would have flayed a man’s skin from his body within the space of seconds. * * * * The scientist squinted his eyes against the glare. There was something in it that caught him with a deadly fascination. The personification of power—the incredibly intense spot of incandescent vapor, the tiny sphere of blue-green fire, the spinning surge of that shining pool, the intense glare of ionization. Power…the breath of modern mankind, the pulse of progress.”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak

“rang. “Hello,” said the editor. “London calling,” came the voice of the operator. “All right,” replied the editor. He recognized the voice of Terry Masters, special correspondent. His voice came clearly over the transatlantic telephone. “The Horror is attacking London in force,” he said. “There are thousands of them and they have completely surrounded the city. All roads are blocked. The government declared the city under martial rule a quarter of an hour ago and efforts are being made to prepare for resistance against the enemy.” “Just a second,” the editor shouted into the transmitter. He touched a button on his desk and in a moment an answering buzz told him he was in communication with the press-room. “Stop the presses!” he yelled into the speaking tube. “Get ready for a new front make-up!” “O.K.,” came faintly through the tube, and the editor turned back to the phone. “Now let’s have it,” he said, and the voice at the London end of the wire droned on, telling the story that in another half hour was read by a world which shuddered in cold fear even as it scanned the glaring headlines. * * * * “Woods,” said the editor of the Press to a reporter, “run over and talk to Dr. Silas White. He phoned me to send someone. Something about this Horror business.” Henry Woods rose from his chair without a word and walked from the office. As he passed the wire machine it was tapping out, with a maddeningly methodical slowness, the story of the fall of London. Only half an hour before it had rapped forth the flashes concerning the attack on Paris and Berlin. He passed out of the building into a street that was swarming with terrified humanity. Six months of terror, of numerous mysterious deaths, of villages blotted out, had set the world on edge. Now with London in possession of the Horror and Paris and Berlin fighting hopelessly for their lives, the entire population of the world was half insane with fright. Exhorters on street corners enlarged upon the end of the world, asking that the people prepare”
― Clifford D. Simak, The Fourth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Clifford D. Simak