Science Fiction Writers - Janet E. Morris

"But people don't go after information themselves, they believe what they hear. This is, historically, the failing of democracy. You have mass rule and you have ascendancy of the mediocre. It's happening in science fiction too. You get a readership which is wider, editors who are only doing science fiction on the way to something more exciting, such as women's romances, and therefore you get mediocre science fiction.

From the book Dream Makers by Charles Platt. 

Science Fiction Writers - Poul Anderson

"I've been interested off and on in the fact that if this industrial civilization of ours suffers a hiatus, we may never be able to rebuild it, not because the knowledge will be lacking but because we won't have the rich natural resources on which the first civilization was founded."

From the book Dream Makers 2 by Charles Platt.

Futurist Alvin Toffler - Institutional Collapse

"Systems do change, and institutions do collapse and die, and new ones spring up. One way this happens is by internal restructuring in a coup d'etat, as the young turks take over from the old turks. Usually this is in response to great external pressures on the system. Another possibility is that outsiders simply topple the institution and create a new one.

Futurist Alvin Toffler - Obsolete Institutions

"Some of our best-known leaders in business and industry are actually very intelligent people, but they make very unintelligent decisions. I think the explanation of this paradox lies in the decision-making institutions. I believe that our institutions are stupid, because they're obsolete, and you could put teams of geniuses to work in those institutions and the results would still be stupid."

From an interview by Charles Platt in the book "Dream Makers 2" forty years ago.

Futurist Alvin Toffler - Unanticipated Consequences

"The peculiar position we find ourselves in today challenges the old political assumptions that have been made by radicals of both Right and Left, that an elite is running things for its own advantage, against our best interests. That presupposes that the decisions being taken by an elite will actually bring about the results which they anticipate.

Futurist Alvin Toffler - Economic Disruption

"We're not going to go through a classical depression or classical inflation. What we're seeing is the emergence of a differentiated society. While some people are eating dog food, there's money to burn in other communities - the sharp contrast between a Second-Wave community like Youngstown or Detroit, and embryonic Third-Wave

Science Fiction Writers - Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur Clarke writing in the 1960s:

Whatever the eventual outcome of our exploration of space we can be reasonably certain of some immediate benefits - and I am deliberately ignoring such 'practical' returns as the multi-billion dollar improvements in weather forecasting and

Science Fiction Writers - Frank Herbert

In an interview in the book Four Science Fiction Masters with Frank Martin, the author Frank Herbert said: "We change our past by what we learn. If a person began reading the trilogy [Dune] by reading Children of Dune, then read the other two [Dune and Dune Messiah], it would change them. They'd be different books.

Science Fiction Writers - Algis Budrys

Algis Budrys had this to say about science fiction to Charles Platt author of Dream Makers:

"I think that all forms of fiction and art are actually survival mechanisms. Far from being frills and decorations on the face of some kind of practical world, they are just about the most practical thing there is. They consist of a series of affirmations or

Science Fiction Writers - Norman Spinrad

In the book Dream Makers by Charles Platt, Norman Spinrad had this to say about his science fiction book A World Between:

"Part of what it's about is the paradox that faces all democratic systems when confronted by totalitarian systems trying to subvert them: how do you preserve your

Science Fiction Writers - Ben Bova

Ben Bova in an April, 1979 interview with Charles Platt in the book Dream Makers Volume 1 had this to say about the future of book publishing: “I think electronic publishing is going to be the alternative that allows people to write books and have them published even though they are not mass-market books. What we'll be seeing in the next decade or two is the growth of electronic publishing and the elimination of paper,

Science Fiction Writers - Isaac Asimov

In the book Dream Makers Volume 1 by Charles Platt published in 1980, some of the writers interviewed offer their thoughts about what was then in humanity's future. Isaac Asimov had this to say about the explosion in population:

“My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as a working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero. There are several items, each one of which is sufficient to do us in. Number one is the population problem. If we multiply sufficiently, then, even if everything else goes right, we're still going to ruin ourselves. Unfortunately it's difficult to make people see this, but I imagine that the time will come very shortly in which a third child will be outlawed, by prohibitive taxation, or forcible sterilization after the second child. Only two things will prevent this. One: if nonviolent means of reducing the birthrate prevail; in other words, if human beings choose not to have too many children. Two: if the population problem overtakes us so that the world is reduced to chaos and anarchy before we can even try drastic means.”