Science & Tech Quote by David Eddings

Eddings slips a little booby trap of irony into what sounds, at first, like a polite shrug. “I hesitate to predict” performs humility, the stock disclaimer of anyone about to make a prediction anyway. It’s a writerly way of admitting two things at once: forecasting culture is a fool’s game, and the temptation to do it is irresistible. The voice is genial, but it’s also wryly self-protective, as if he’s winking at the reader while keeping his hands clean.

The real payload sits in the conditional: if humanity is broadly optimistic, science fiction is about to get wildly popular. That’s a reframing of the genre’s reputation. Instead of treating sci-fi as escapism for pessimists or a bunker for tech anxiety, Eddings ties it to an upbeat public mood: curiosity, confidence, the sense that the future is a place you can build rather than survive. It’s a sales pitch disguised as a sociological observation, and it flatters the audience: liking science fiction becomes a signal that you’re forward-leaning, not merely nerdy.

Context matters. Coming out of the late 20th century, science fiction was already oscillating between utopian space-age dreams and darker, cyberpunk distrust. Eddings is nudging the conversation toward the former, suggesting that genre cycles track collective temperament. Subtextually, he’s also reassuring his own industry: when people feel hopeful, they’re willing to entertain big ideas, strange worlds, and the kind of imaginative risk that realism often can’t justify.