There is a twenty-third century legend that youth was conscripted to work in mines. Anyhow, all young people were known as miners at one period.

A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.

We are now in a position to determine just what sort of science fiction story this really is.

It’s purely a defensive device. We seldom quarrel, and this is one of the reasons. Can you imagine yourself getting all worked up and contorted and illogical and then coming face to face with yourself,...

He slept like an animal, well and lightly, faced in the opposite direction from that of a man; for a man going to sleep is about to escape into it while animals are prepared to...

What is ‘everything else’?

Let me tell you something: you can not write good fiction about ideas. You can only write good fiction about people.

It was spring, the part of spring where the bursting is done, the held-in pressures of desiccated sap-veins and gum-sealed buds are gone, and all the world’s in a rush to be beautiful.

Living things aren’t finished, you see. Everything they have ever been in contact with, each thought they have had, each person they have known – these things are still at work in them; nothing’s finished.(“The...

Reality isn’t the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we’re engineered for it. It’s a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and...

His body was tubby but his arms apparently couldn’t understand that, for they were long and scrawny. From his brow to an inch below his eyes, his nose turned up; from there on, down. His...

so I have to use lots and lots of little ones.

Just think about it,” he said softly. “You can do practically anything. You can have practically everything. And none of it will keep you from being alone.””Shut up shut up…Everybody’s alone.”He nodded. “But some people...

Outnumbered again. Come in and feed the face.

Does anyone ask a painter — even the painter himself — why he paints? Now me, I painted… used to… whatever I saw that was beautiful. It had to be beautiful to me, through and...