Information is not like money or any other commodity. The cracks that it can slip through are almost infinitely small, and it can be duplicated at almost zero cost. Soon information will be like air, like the weather, and as easy to control.
Humorists are precisely the kinds of guys who can cut through the orgy of petty indignation that the aging baby boomers are imposing on this great country.
It is a total mystery how we evolved minds capable of piloting cars through wild maneuvers using a wrist to steep while shouting at a cell phone. The creationists are fools for focusing on animal evolution. Darwin explains nature! He has more difficulty explaining us.
It was a strange trek – the sullen leading the apathetic, followed by the confused, all tailed by the inveterately amused.
The best means to an end are not always those that appear most direct.
Alex felt the words wash over him. He had the strange fantasy the things were seeking places within him to lay their young.
Your neighbors are not all sheep. Your political opponents are not all evil or fools. Try talking to those you despise. They are your fellow citizens. And together, we are not lesser than any “greatest generation.“.
How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?
In all of history, we have found just one cure for error – a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.
Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?
If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.
Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.
Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It’s happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.
In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it’s not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.
If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.
The village is coming back, like it or not.
If an outsider perceives ‘something wrong’ with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask ‘what mistake am I making?’ before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.
The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers – it’s that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.
Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres obsess upon so-called eternal verities, SF deals with the possibility that our children may have different problems. They may, indeed, be different than we have been.
History and geology show what an eyeblink it’s been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.