Soon after her beloved young brother was killed, she asked me, What is the purpose of grief? Does it serve any biological function?
Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting.
Seems like it, answered Bowman. The unit checks out perfectly. Even under two hundred percent overload, there’s no fault prediction indicated. The two men were standing in the tiny workshop-cum-lab in...
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
Poole and Bowman had often humorously referred to themselves as caretakers or janitors aboard a ship that could really run itself. They would have been astonished, and more than a little indignant, to...
Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of th...
One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the...
Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll f...
No group can survive, let alone thrive, unless what is good for the overall community is more important than individual freedom. Take, for example, resource allocation. How can anyone with any intelli...
No electronic computer can match the human brain at associating apparently irrelevant facts.
Manual control, please.Are you sure, Frank?Quite sure, 'Falcon' ... Thank you.Illogical though it seemed, most of the human race had found it impossible not to be polite to its artificial children, ho...
Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget.
It seemed altogether unfair and unreasonable that the sky should be so hard.
It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.
Hello, Dave, said Hal presently. Have you found the trouble? This
He pressed the button, and waited. Several minutes later, a metal arm moved out from the bunk, and a plastic nipple descended toward his lips. He sucked on it eagerly, and a warm, sweet fluid coursed...
He lifted the telephone receiver and pressed it against the plastic of his helmet. If there had been a dialing sound he could have heard it through the conducting material. But, as he had expected, th...
He felt like a young student again, confronted with all the art and knowledge of mankind. The experience was both exhilarating and depressing; a whole universe lay at his fingertips, but the fraction...
Even on Earth, the first steps in this direction had been taken. There were millions of men, doomed in earlier ages, who now lived active and happy lives thanks to artificial limbs, kidneys, lungs, an...
Do you believe in ghosts, Dim? Certainly not: but like every sensible man, I’m afraid of them. Why do you ask?