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James E. Gunn
(12 Jul 1923 - )
American author who began writing for magazines at age 25, and followed with numerous short stories, novels, and several non-fiction books on his favorite genre, science fiction, including Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction and textbooks. He has also written plays, screenplays, and radio scripts.
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Science Quotes by James E. Gunn (1 quote)
When they [radio astronomers] grew weary at their electronic listening posts. When their eyes grew dim with looking at unrevealing dials and studying uneventful graphs, they could step outside their concrete cells and renew their dull spirits in communion with the giant mechanism they commanded, the silent, sensing instrument in which the smallest packets of energy, the smallest waves of matter, were detected in their headlong, eternal flight across the universe. It was the stethoscope with which they took the pulse of the all and noted the birth and death of stars, the probe which, here on an insignificant planet of an undistinguishable star on the edge of its galaxy, they explored the infinite.
— James E. Gunn
The Listeners (1968, 1972), 12.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
