Is it...dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright. "A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well.

An Engineer is no match for a Historian with his dander up!

You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after " she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.

As a child I always steered clear of science fiction, but in the autumn of 1977 the bow-wave of publicity for the first Star Wars movie had already reached me, so I was eager for anything science-fictional.

Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.

Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night.

he cut through the 21st Century Gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal headed gods of lost America