We over estimate technology in the short term and under estimate technology in the long term.

Religion is a byproduct of fear.

Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.

When all else failed, you had to rely on eyeball intrumentation.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

Our own grandchildren may demonstrate that-sometimes- Gigantic is Beautiful.

There's a passage about 'rivers of molten rock that wound their way... until they cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth.' That's a perfect description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter century before anyone ever saw a picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art.