For all the claims one hears about the liberating impact of the data-net, the truth is that it's wished on most of us a brand-new reason for paranoia.

First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.

"Pay him what was promised", said the caliph. "And put out his eyes."

What in Gods name is it worth to be human, if we have to be saved from ourselves by a machine?

Don't bother explaining--I've heard all the excuses and the trouble is most of them are true.

What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.

As its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.