That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.

I guess that's the story of life: what you most fear never happens, but what you most yearn for never happens either. This is the difference between life and fiction. I suppose it's a good trade-off. But I'm not sure.

You mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before --" "The writers," Pris said, "made it up.

Giving me a a new idea is like handing a cretin a gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang bang.

Reality is just a point of view.

Are we to assist it in gaining power in order to save our lives? Is that the paradox of our earthly situation?

So we and our elaborately evolving computers may meet each other halfway. Someday a human being, named perhaps Fred White, may shoot a robot named Pete Something-or-other, which has come out of a General Electric factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And the dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was Mr. White's beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them.