To find anything comparable with our forthcoming ventures into space, we must go back far beyond Columbus, far beyond Odysseus-far, indeed, beyond the first ape-man. We must contemplate the moment, now irrevocably lost in the mists of time, when the ancestor off all of us came crawling out of the sea.

If there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they can't be very important gods.

Attempting to define science fiction is an undertaking almost as difficult, though not so popular, as trying to define pornography... In both pornography and SF, the problem lies in knowing exactly where to draw the line.

Some things have eternal value, and compassion is one of them. I hope we never lose that. Compassion for humans as well as animals.

When the Sun shrinks to a dull red dwarf, it will not be dying. It will just be starting to live and everything that has gone before will merely be a prelude to its real history.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.