James Nicoll Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

Hell, Chuck Yeager could do it in his sleep while on fire, I'm sure.

James Nicoll
Before it exploded one night, I went to a four grade, two room schoolhouse and we had textbooks from the 1940s.

James Nicoll
I believe that I have now experienced the lifetime maximum exposure to bottom spanking in fantasy novels.

James Nicoll
If there's a stack [of novels to review], the unpromising stuff goes at the top and the promising stuff goes at the bottom. That way, I am eager to finish Overwrought Romantic Mary Sue Fantasy because I know that will let me read Niche Product That Only the Author, James and Some Guy at JPL Likes.

James Nicoll
Folks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects.

James Nicoll
The thing about the Star Wars expanded universe that most impresses me is how the need for endless sequels has taken what was way back in the late Disco a fairly upbeat series where the good guys eventually prevailed and turned into a crapsack setting that's grimmer than the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Congo Wars I & II and the Mongol Conquests combined.

James Nicoll
Most of my scars are not fire-related and I no longer say "I know what I am doing" at critical moments.

James Nicoll
I can't help but notice that everytime I fly somewhere, other people's planes fall out of the sky.

James Nicoll
Someday I'd like to read a story about competent people on Mars.

James Nicoll
Humans hate to admit error even as they stand there, black and smoldering, with the stub of a cigarette in one hand, in the middle of a wide crater containing them and the remains of a sign that once read 'DANGER: VOLATILE EXPLOSIVES'

James Nicoll
Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.

James Nicoll
The number of times I have been declared dead is statistically insignificant, although admittedly non-zero.

James Nicoll
Yes, I was suprised how easy it was to cut the door off my cat.

James Nicoll
Aha! The Alien Planet Canada series, where the planet the characters are marooned on seems to be Manitoba. Bad bad world building.

James Nicoll
[The cat] and I have an agreement: I leave her alone and don't make sudden moves when I wake up to find her perched on my chest, staring with an unblinking hostile gaze at my face and in return she rarely mutilates me.

James Nicoll
It's bad to wake up and see a large cat in mid-leap from the rough vicinity of the ceiling.

James Nicoll
Tor is the hard one. They employ a lot of editors, whose tastes vary. They don't always indicate who has edited what (on the choice of the editor, I think) so editor stalking can be more difficult with Tor. Ear-tagging works but is rather surprisingly illegal.

James Nicoll
As I've often said, I'm a fan of hard SF. No, it's more like I am addicted to it, even the stepped-on 20 times and cut with pow[d]ered milk and rat-poison sort of hard SF. This gets us to Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II, published last year in a limited edition from PS Publishing. In one of the great tragedies of publishing, it was not a limited enough edition and so I have read it.

James Nicoll
John Barnes is incredibly variable. Pete's Rule (Never buy a Barnes with sodomy in it) is a good one but unfortunately the publisher does not put that kind of stuff on the cover.

James Nicoll
I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface.

James Nicoll
Goodkind is noted for subtle allegories the same way Mt Kilimanjaro is known for floating weightlessly.

James Nicoll
Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written.

James Nicoll