And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature.

What man has done, man can aspire to do.

The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.

The definition of a Dark Age is that we no longer remember what we once could do.

I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.

As a means of subsidizing lawyers the present nuclear regulation system is well designed - but is there not perhaps a cheaper way of rewarding legal diligence? It would probably be cheaper to give each law school graduate a guaranteed salary of $50,000 a year on the condition that he (or she) not practice law.

Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.