I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness.

Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.

All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy.

Escape is a consumer goods like another

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.

There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.