I realized very early in life what my abilities and limitations were, and foreign languages was definitely one of my limitations. With strenuous effort, I just barely passed my French class at Harvard so I could graduate.

A hundred years ago, Auguste Compte, ... a great philosopher, said that humans will never be able to visit the stars, that we will never know what stars are made out of, that that's the one thing that science will never ever understand, because they're so far away. And then, just a few years later, scientists took starlight, ran it through a prism, looked at the rainbow coming from the starlight, and said: "Hydrogen!" Just a few years after this very rational, very reasonable, very scientific prediction was made, that we'll never know what stars are made of.

Math is discovered. To be invented requires an inventor, but math exists outside of humanity. But ultimately, the laws of the universe will be reduced down to a single equation, perhaps no more than one inch long. But leaves the final question, where did that one inch equation come from?

Our grandkids will lead the lives of the gods of mythology. Zeus could think and move objects around. We'll have that power. Venus had a perfect, timeless body. We'll have that, too. Pegasus was a flying horse. We'll be able to modify life in the future.

We have the media, which is such a waste in the sense that you can actually feel your IQ get lower as you watch TV.

Growing new organs of the body as they wear out, extending the human lifespan? What's not to like?

Science fiction without the science just becomes, you know, sword and sorcery, basically stories about heroism and not much more.