I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.

How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?

Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing.

As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.

I love superconductors.

That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.

And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.