"Hitler had once said that the true victory of the Nazis would be to force its enemies, the United States in particular, to be come like the Third Reich - i.e. a totalitarian society - in order to win... Look what we had to become in Viet Nam just to lose, let alone win; can you imagine what we'd have had to become in order to win? Hitler would have gotten a lot of laughs out of it, and the laughs would have been on us... and to a very great extent in fact were. And they were hollow and grim laughs, without humor of any kind."



a) Phillip K. Dick; author of "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", later filmed as "Total Recall" with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

b) Isaac Asimov; author of "Bicentennial Man", later made into the film starring Robin Williams.

c) Harlan Ellison; author of "Soldier", which later inspired the film "The Terminator" - once again, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

d) Frank Herbert; author of "Dune", later made into the film starring Kyle MacLachlan.

Hmmm...


It looks like people are very relectuant to even guess at this one (even if you *do* have a mimumum 25% chance - maybe I made it *too* hard).

Here's some more info on each of the authors to help you - I'll post the answer in a few days.



Phillip K. Dick also wrote "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" which was turned ito the film "Blade Runner" starring Harrison Ford, in which a detective hunts human-like "replicants" whose artificial intelligence nevertheless does not officially qualify them for full "human" status.

Isaac Asimov, apart from at one time being Professor of Biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine, wrote innumerable works of scientific non-fiction and also fiction, including the "Robot" series of short stories, in which he developed the "Laws Of Robotics", which were 3 (and later, 4) laws to be built into artificial robot brains which would suffice to govern robot behaviour in a way that would best promote their helpfulness to mankind.

Harlan Ellison is a rather cantakerous science-fiction writer who was involved with the TV show Babylon 5 (apparently in ways which he cares not to widely publicise). He also worked on shows such as "Logan's Run", "Star Trek", "The Outer Limits" and "The Twilight Zone". He edited a series ofr scince-fiction short-story anthologies headed by "Dangerous Visions" in which authors submitted visions (not predictions) of the future.

Frank Herbert also co-wrote the "Voidship" series with Bill Ransom, starting with "Destination: Void" in which a mysterious all-powerful Ship seems to be the ultimate Artificial Intelligence to which humans aspire as they struggle for survivial.

I'll go with Isaac Asimov:)

I'll go with Ellison because it's the sort of thing he would write. If anyone's read 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream', I'm sure you'd agree.

OK, I'll put the answer below...





The science fiction writer who said that was actually Philip K. Dick, choice a. He wrote that when discussing his short story "Oh, To Be A Blobel!" In this story, Humans went to war with Blobels, and each side sent undercover agents across after receiving genetic modifications that temporarily changed their body shapes to match the other race. After the war, those changes were found to be unstable and humans would spasmodically revert to Blobel form and vice versa, causing consternation among the agent's immediate neighbours, especially as each form was visually repulsive to the other. Therefore the only one who would marry a human agent was a blobel agent, but even then the temporary reversions caused domestic stress. Therefore one human agent decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and undergo total and permanent blobel conversion, and to move to the Blobel planet to avoid humans. Unbeknownst to him, his Blobel wife has decided to make the corresponding sacrifice back on Earth. The tragedy of each of them becoming what they most hated in an attempt to satisfy the one they most loved is echoed in the commentary that Dick wrote...


It does seem that the comment was apt for Ellison's story of eternal hatred and torture, but it wasn't him :)