And I needed a rock. Something to hold onto, to stand on. Something solid. Because everything was going soft, turning into mush, into marsh, into fog. Fog closing in on all sides. I didn't know where I was at all.

There's a good deal in common between the mind's eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has all too often been the boobtube, it could be, it can be, the box of dreams.

Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.

Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.

Do you know how to read?" "No. It is one of the black arts." He nodded. "But a useful one," he said.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

The light is the left hand of darkness.