This implies, of course, the development of a really compact and light-weight method of storing or producing electricity, at least an order of magnitude better than our present clumsy batteries. Such an invention has been overdue for about fifty years;.
The thing’s hollow – it goes on forever – and – oh my God! – it’s full of stars!
A truly intelligent race is not likely to be unfriendly.
There is something very strange about a universe where a few dead butterflies can balance a billion-ton tower.
It seemed unfair that this should have happened in his time, after all these centuries of rest. But men cannot bargain with Fate, and choose peace or adventure as they wish.
And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere.
Futilitarianism.
My colleagues and I, Dr. Floyd, will stake our reputations on this. TMA-1 has nothing to do with the Chinese. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the human race – for when it was buried, there were no humans. “You see, it is approximately three million years old. What you are now looking at is the first evidence of intelligent life beyond the Earth.
President of the Society for Creative Anachronisms.
News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of truth. Only good reports need confirmation.
I am the biggest anachronism on Planet Earth.
Cassini – who discovered Japetus in 1671 – also observed that it was six times brighter on one side of its orbit than the other.
The history of the Universe must be a mass of such disconnected threads, and no one could say which were important and which were trivial.
I thought this couldn’t happen in astronomy. Isn’t celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.
I agree that was terrible – but what could my government do about it?” “A great deal – if it wished. But that would have offended the people who supplied it with oil – and bought its weapons, like the land mines that killed and maimed civilians by the thousands.
Rolf van der Berg was the right man, in the right place, at the right time; no other combination would have worked. Which, of course, is how much of history is made.
Politics is the art of the possible’?” “Quite true – which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.
That’s still looking a long way ahead. For the present, you’re the only person who should attempt communication. Agreed, Captain?
Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,” Anderson explained. “Raising animals to – ugh – eat them became economically impossible. I don’t know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with hydroponic techniques.
Well, that’s a relief. You know that I have the greatest possible enthusiasm for this mission.” “I’m sure of it. Now please let me have.