So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.
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. It was bad enough when they were motion...
The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as quickly as it had begun, and everyone drank his fill of the muddy water. Honor had been satisfied; each group had staked its c...
The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well stocked mind is safe from boredom.
The sign of its passing was written there upon the sky as if a giant hand had drawn a piece of chalk across the blue dome of heaven. Even as they watched, the gleaming vapor trail began to fray at the...
The suggestion that the cores of the gas giants might consist of diamond was first made by Marvin Ross of the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in a classic paper The i...
The trouble with cliché's, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, is that they are so boringly true. But love at first sight is never boring.
There was no evidence that the intelligence of the human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest opportunity of using what brain he had.
There was nothing left of Earth. They had leeched away the last atoms of its substance. It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a...
Though that, surely, could not be its ultimate goal, it was aimed squarely at the Greater Magellanic Cloud, and the lonely gulfs beyond the Milky Way.
We’re particularly anxious to get our hands on Pioneer 10—the first man-made object to escape from the Solar System.
Yes, it made sense, and was so absurdly simple that it would take a genius to think of it. And, perhaps, someone who did not expect to do it himself.
[T]hese leaders must not believe they are actually being watched, for their behavior in no way reflects the possible existence of a set of values or ethical laws that supersedes their own dominion.
The cipher was based on the product of two hundred-digit prime numbers, and the National Security Agency had staked its reputation on the claim that the fastest computer in existence could not crack i...
. . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.
If one had to think about every footstep one took, ordinary walking would be impossible.
Absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes.
All bureaucracies are the same. They drain the life out of the truly creative people and develop mindless paper-pushers as their critical mass.
And Stormgren hoped that when Karellen was free to walk once more on Earth, he would one day come to these northern forests, and stand beside the grave of the first man to be his friend.
And there still remained, for all men to share, the linked worlds of Love and Art. Linked, because love without art is merely the slaking of desire, and Art cannot be enjoyed unless it is approached w...
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