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In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-bestscience writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fictionwriter.[...more

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There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism,...more

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And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had bee...more

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Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.

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How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.

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I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

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The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible

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Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a ...more

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Oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine...more

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(...)Through the ship's telescopes, he had watched the death of the solar system. With his own eyes, he had seen the volcanoes of Mars erupt for the f...more

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Slowly, Jimmy held up his outstretched hands. Men had been arguing for two hundred years about this gesture; would every creature, everywhere in the u...more

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There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped towar...more

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..the happy hum of humanity.

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In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were st...more

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Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer ...more