A science fiction writer should try to combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic.

Secrecy was the problem; transparency the obvious cure.

Virtual reality is just air guitar writ large.

No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?

Honor does not have to be defended.

With billions of years, who knows what science might make possible? Why, it might even make it possible for an intelligence, or data patterns representing it, to survive a big crunch and exist again in the next cycle of creation. Such an entity might even have science sufficient to allow it to influence the parameters for the next cycle, creating a designer universe into which that entity itself will be reborn already armed with billions of years worth of knowledge and wisdom.

Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.