Virtual reality is just air guitar writ large.

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.

Paul Levinson has outdone himself: The Plot to Save Socrates is a philosophically rich gem full of big ideas and wonderful time-travel tricks.

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

There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?

You can't choose the ways in which you'll be tested.

That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.