Great sci-fi has never shied from tackling the Big Questions, though really great sci-fi never forgets to entertain us along the way. Shock and awe applies to art, as well.

I don't care what the stars say about how small we are. One, even the smallest, weakest, most insignificant one, matters.

What boy my age didn’t dream of fleeing the well-tended lawn and lamp-lit street for the untamed wilderness, where grand adventure awaited on the other side of the horizon, where the stars burned undimmed in the velvet sky above his head and the virgin ground lay untrodden beneath his feet?

I was woefully ignorant in the social graces. I was being raised, after all, by Pellinore Warthrop.

I do not mean to mock or ridicule your life's work, for in one way at least it mimics my own: We have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of phantoms. The difference is the nature of those phantoms. Mine exist between other men's ears; yours live solely between your own.

What were they thinking? 'It's an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!

It isn't up to me to break his heart; that's time's job.