Across the gulf of centuries, the blind smile of Homer is turned upon our age. Along the echoing corridors of time, the roar of the rockets merges now with the creak of the wind-taut rigging. For somewhere in the world today, still unconscious of his destiny, walks the boy who will be the first Odysseus of the Age of Space.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.

He was moving through a new order of creation, of which few men had ever dreamed. Beyond the realms of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire, which he alone had been privileged to glimpse. It was too much to expect that he would also understand.