Robert J. Sawyer

Gone. and it was completely. Everyone I'd every known, every place I'd ever been. My Mother. My father. Rebecca. Out of site. Out of mind.

Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.

¨Kayla replied, ´And we---or the p-zeds, at any rate---copy indiscriminately, without reflection. And if the person they´re coyping is a psychopath, then their behavior ends up being de facto psychopathic, too.´ ¨

That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another _ that, in fact, has never been observed.

No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?

It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.

There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?

When we have machines that are as intelligent - and then twice as intelligent - as we are, there is no reason why that relationship cannot be synergistic rather than antagonistic.

Regrettably, with '2001' having a title that had a year in it, science fiction essentially set itself up in the public's imagination as saying, 'Here's what you get if you wait to that year.' Well, we all waited till that year, and we didn't get anything at all like that.

You can't be a 21st-century science fiction writer writing about Mars without doing tips of the hat to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Ray Bradbury, to H.G. Wells, to the guys who first put it in the public imagination that Mars was an exciting place.

All the things that made us basically nasty, rapacious, competitive as a species are not necessarily hard-coded into whatever passes for the DNA of artificial intelligence.

It's possible that there is a guiding intelligence in our universe. I don't see a lot of personal evidence for an interventionist-on-an-individual-basis-deity. I have friends who very much do believe in that. But I don't.

George Orwell's science-fiction classic 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' wasn't a failure because the future it predicted failed to come to pass. Rather, it was a resounding success because it helped us prevent that future.

Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds' wasn't about a Martian invasion - it was a critique of British colonialism, and... 'The Time Machine' is really an indictment of the British class system.

I am part of a minority that is deeply misunderstood. People have very confused ideas about us. Many are frightened of us. I've even heard it said that many people wouldn't want their daughters or sons to marry one of us, and I know of people who have been denied jobs or promotions because they share this trait with me. But being what I am does not make me bad; being what I am does not make me dangerous; being what I am does not mean I don't love, or hurt, or have a sense of humor. My name is Malclom Decter, and I'm here today to tell the whole world what I am. ... I am an atheist.

Mr. Lockery__y biology teacher__ays if dinosaurs were magically brought forward in time today, we__ have nothing to worry about. Dogs, wolves, and bears would make short work of tyrannosaurs._ She nodded at Schrödinger, who was now padding across the floor in the opposite direction. __ig cats, too. They__e faster, tougher, and brighter than anything that existed seventy million years ago. Everything is always ramping up, always escalating.

He had a collection of science-fiction films on DVD and Blu-ray discs, and although he said he__ seen most of them before, Caitlin was surprised to discover how many of the cases were still shrink-wrapped. __hy__ you buy them if you weren__ going to watch them?_ she asked. He looked at the tall, thin cabinets that contained the movies and seemed to ponder the question. __y childhood was on sale,_ he said at last, __o I bought it.

And Wolfram knows about cellular automata?_ __h, my goodness, yes,_ said Anna. __e wrote a book you could kill a man with__welve hundred pages__alled A New Kind of Science. It__ all about them._ __e should totally ask him what he thinks!_ Caitlin said.