Much blood has also been spilled on the carpet in attempts to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy. I have suggested an operational definition: science fiction is something that COULD happe...
Moses Kaldor had always loved mountains; they made him feel nearer to the God whose nonexistence he still sometimes resented.
Martin’s one of the nicest fellows you could meet, as long as you don’t do it too often.
Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords abolished war and hunger and disease, they...
Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to human relationships as well.
I’m only an ex-astronomer; it’s years since I did any real research. Now I’m a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.
I’m a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand; but
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame...
In particular, as was pointed out by Isaacs et al. almost a hundred years ago (see Science, Vol. 151, pp. 682–83, 1966), diamond is the only construction material which would make possible the so-call...
If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.
He was prepared, he thought, for any wonder. The only thing he had never expected was the utterly commonplace.
He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity—the conflict between truth, and concealment of truth.
He had sometimes wondered if the real reason why men sought danger was that only thus could they find the companionship and solidarity which they unconsciously craved.
Hal’s internal fault predictor could have made a mistake. It’s more
Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he...
But these things now belonged to the past, and he was flying toward the future. As they banked, Dr. Floyd could see below him a maze of buildings, then a great airstrip, then a broad, dead-straight sc...
Apart from the jet-black sky, the photo might have been taken almost anywhere in the polar regions of Earth; there was nothing in the least alien about the sea of wrinkled ice that stretched all the w...
And just fifty years had separated the Wright Brothers from the first jet airliners.