Will none wipe the sneer off the face of the cosmos?

If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.

Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.

Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery

I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.

Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.

It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.