It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri

I'm very interested in the evolution of technology, and it's really the idea of artificial life which intrigues me, more than just intelligence - a new, evolving life form arising within our datasphere and coming into living relation with humanity.

Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.

War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health.

No book or poem is ever finished, merely abandoned.

I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?" Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, Duré. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life.

Sometimes ... dreams are all that separate us from the machines.