One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events

Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.

Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.

I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.

Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres obsess upon so-called eternal verities, SF deals with the possibility that our children may have different problems. They may, indeed, be different than we have been.

The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers - it's that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.

...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.