Like everything that was worth doing, that would take time and practice.
Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.
They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.
They had forgotten much, but they did not know it. They were as perfectly fitted to their environment as it was to them—for both had been designed together. What was beyond the walls of the city was n...
She was certain that it was wise to prevent Wilson and Brown from working closely together during sorties inside Rama. Nicole chastised herself for not having raised the issue with Borzov on her own....
Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.
Naturally, the system would have to be rigidly closed, recycling all food, air, and other expendables. But, of course, that’s just how the Earth operates—on a slightly larger scale.
In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [...] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts o...
Imagine that you're an intelligent extraterrestrial, concerned only with verifiable truths. You discover a species that has divided itself into thousands - no, by now millions - of tribal groups holdi...
Death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: why are we here, and what should we do?
Could we go into your room? she asked. I knew it. I knew it, he said, spinning around and sliding quickly toward his door. It's finally happend, just like in dreams. An intelligent, beautiful woman is...
As his body became more and more defenseless, so his means of offense became steadily more frightful.
A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.
New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!
How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Wonder if he can feel pain? Bowman thought briefly. Probably not, he told himself; there are no sense organs in the human cortex, after all. The human brain can be operated on without anesthetics. He
The next day the government of South Africa announced that full civil rights would be restored to the white minority.
Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would involve stimulation of all th...
Only Time is universal; Night and Day are merely quaint local customs found on those planets that tidal forces have not yet robbed of their rotation. But however far they travel from their native worl...