Alien worlds - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

I was transplanted to a dark planet where the first germs of creation were struggling together. From a clay that was still soft rose gigantic palm trees, poisonous euphorbias and acanthus twined about cactus - the arid forms of rocks stuck out like skeletons from this sketch of creation, and hideous reptiles squirmed, enlarged, or grew round in the midst of an inextricable web of wild vegetation. The pale light of the stars alone illuminated the bluish distances of this strange horizon; and yet, as the creations were formed, a more luminous star gathered from them the germs of light.

- Gйrard de Nerval, Aurelia (1854), translated by Richard Aldington (1932)

[On the Moon:] He sighed and looked about him. ''This is no world for men,'' he said. ''And yet in a way - it appeals.''

- H. G.Wells, The First Men in the Moon (1901)

I perceived the moon no longer as a planet from which I most earnestly desired the means of escape, but as a possible refuge for human destitution. [. . .] ''We must annex this moon,'' I said. ''There must be no shilly-shally. This is part of theWhite Man's Burthen.''

- H. G.Wells, The First Men in the Moon (1901)

I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (1917)

You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter.

- H. P. Lovecraft, ''Beyond theWall of Sleep'' (1919)

Other memories encroached, cold, fear-etched memories that reached for him like taloned, withered claws. Memories of alien lands acrawl with loathesomeness and venom. Strange planets that were strange not because they were alien, but because of the abysmal terror in the very souls of them. Memories of shambling things that triumphed over pitiful peoples whose only crime was they could not fight back.

- Clifford D. Simak, ''Shadow of Life'' (1943)

There they go, off to Mars, just for the ride, thinking that they will find a planet like a seer's crystal, in which to read a miraculous future.What they'll find, instead, is the somewhat shopworn image of themselves. Mars is a mirror, not a crystal.

- Ray Bradbury, ''A Few Notes on The Martian Chronicles'' (1950)

[First words said on the Moon:] By the grace of God, and the name of the United States of America, I take possession of this planet on behalf of, and for the benefit of, all mankind.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Rip von Ronkel, and James O'Hanlon, Destination Moon (film, 1950)

I knew what it was like to walk on alien soil.

- Leigh Brackett, ''TheWoman from Altair'' (1951)

Alien worlds have alien rules, you either learn quickly or not at all.

- Michael Shaara, ''The Holes'' (1954)

It was a fresh young world, Hubert thought sadly; a virgin world, waiting innocently for the first immigrants to despoil it; waiting, like a young and tender girl, to be picked up on the stellar street and sold into galactic prostitution.

- Robert F. Young, ''Report on the Sexual Behavior on Arcturus X'' (1954)

The Lord sure makes some beautiful worlds.

- Cyril Hume, Forbidden Planet (film, 1956)

Every world was a miracle, if your eyes were good enough.

- Chad Oliver, ''NorthWind'' (1956)

They were a vast historical panorama [of Mars], clockwise around the room. A group of skin-clad savages squatting around a fire. Hunters with bows and spears, carrying the carcass of an animal slightly like a pig. Nomads riding long-legged, graceful mounts like hornless deer. Peasants sowing and reaping; mud-walled hut villages, and cities; processions of priests and warriors; battles with swords and bows, and with cannon and muskets; galleys, and ships with sails, and ships without visible means of propulsion, and aircraft. Changing costumes and weapons and machines and styles of architecture. A richly fertile landscape, gradually merging into barren deserts and bushlands - the time of the great planet-wide drought. The Canal Builders - men with machines recognizable as steam-shovels and derricks, digging and quarrying and driving across the empty plains with aquaducts [sic]. More cities - seaports on the shrinking oceans; dwindling, half-deserted cities; an abandoned city, with four tiny humanoid figures and a thing like a combatcar in the middle of a brush-grown plaza, they and their vehicle dwarfed by the huge lifeless buildings around them. [. . .] ''Wonderful!'' von Ohlmhorst was saying. ''The entire history of this race.''

- H. Beam Piper, ''Omnilingual'' (1957)

Poor old Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna with his rot wide open like a kid who'd never viddied any such thing before, and he said: ''What's on them, I wonder.What would be up there on things like that?'' I nudged him hard, saying: ''Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them. There'll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing.''

- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

He was at home on those alien worlds, without time, those worlds where flowers copulate and the stars do battle in the heavens, falling at last to the ground, bleeding, like so many split and shattered chalices, and the seas part to reveal stairways leading down, and arms emerge from caverns, waving torches that flame like liquid faces.

- Roger Zelazny, ''HeWho Shapes'' (1965)

He awoke - and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought, what would it be like to trudge among them? Great and greater yet; the dream grew as he became fully conscious, the dream and the yearning.

- Philip K. Dick, ''We Can Remember It for YouWholesale'' (1966)

The grass is always greener under an alien star.

- John DeCles, ''Cruelty'' (1970)

Blossoms opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steel-flowers rising blue from the brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-menever down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them on iridescent wings; a crownbuck shook his horns and bugled.

- Poul Anderson, ''The Queen of Air and Darkness'' (1971)

Carry me back to Titan. That's where I want to be. I want to repose On the methane snows At the edge of a frozen sea.

- Eleanor Arnason, ''TheWarlord of Saturn's Moons'' (1974)

Don't you understand, this is the first time I've actually stood on the surface of another planet . . . a whole alien world . . . ! Pity it's such a dump though.

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

We have labored to produce a planet which, taken as a whole, would obey the Three Laws of Robotics. It does nothing to harm human beings, either by commission or omission. It does what we want it to do, as long as we do not ask it to harm human beings. And it protects itself, except at times and in places where it must serve us or save us even at the price of harm to itself.

- Isaac Asimov, The Robots of Dawn (1983)

We all want different things from Mars.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)