Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.

Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle 60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.

He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.