Gregory Benford
Gregory Benford
Gregory Benfordis an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 January 1941
CountryUnited States of America
firsts theory crank
(Crank theories) always violated the first rule of a scientific model: they were uncheckable.
mistake biggest-mistake
The biggest mistake is being too afraid of making one.
suicide space risk
Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival.
giving-up people acting
In a tough situation, don't avoid acting just because it's easier or comfortable. Don't lapse into a passive state. People who give up, die.
technology magic
Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
games losing clarity
If you are losing at a game, change the game.
doubt teach
Religions do not teach doubt.
pain ignorance everyday
You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life's pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with - no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.
real matter wells
No matter how much you plan for it, the real thing seems curiously, well, unreal.
pleasure results made
It was getting the results that made science worth doing; the accolades were a thin, secondary pleasure.
tides details great-nations
The personal was, compared with the tides of great nations, a bothersome detail.
welfare economics modern
Modern economics and the welfare state borrowed heavily on the future.
voice forever literature
Science is like literature, a continuing dialog among diverse and conflicting voices, no one ever wholly right or wholly wrong, but a steady conversation forever provisional and personal and living.
contraceptives ugliness
Ugliness is nature's contraceptive.