Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 31
“Just as mainstream literature shows us how our contemporaries view the present, and historical fiction shows us how they view the past (not, of course, what the present or the past were actually like), so speculative fiction shows us how they view the future. I happen to believe that my contemporaries' view of the past is not very important; but their view of the present is quite definitely important, and their view of the future is vital.”
"The Right of Things to Come", presentation for the Science Fiction Research Association (1978), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction
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Gene Wolfe 102
American science fiction and fantasy writer 1931–2019Related quotes
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p. 93
“The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around.”
Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation (1983)
Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 11
Page 438 https://books.google.com/books?id=-F8wAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA438. Quote republished in " Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/," Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1965), p. <span class="plainlinks"> 22 http://alexpeak.com/twr/lar/1/1/2/#p22</span>.
"Youth" (1912), II
1910s, "Natural Law", 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918)
Preface
The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)
“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”
1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967)