There Are No Gods, We Are Told,

As Long As A Film Stays Unmade, The Book Is Entirely Yours, It Belongs To The Writer. As Soon As You Make It Into A Film, Suddenly More People See It Than Have Ever Read The Book.

One Of The Advantages Of Having Laws Is The Pleasure One May Take In Breaking Them.

Even Galaxy-spanning Anarchist Utopias Of Stupefying Full-spectrum Civilisational Power Have Turf Wars Within Their Unacknowledged Militaries.

Science Fiction Has Its Own History, Its Own Legacy Of What's Been Done, What's Been Superseded, What's So Much Part Of The Furniture It's Practically Part Of The Fabric Now, What's Become No More Than A Joke... And So On. It's Just Plain Foolish, As Well As Comically Arrogant, To Ignore All This, To Fail To Do The Most Basic Research.

Stories Set In The Culture In Which Things Went Wrong Tended To Start With Humans Losing Or Forgetting Or Deliberately Leaving Behind Their Terminal. It Was A Conventional Opening, The Equivalent Of Straying Off The Path In The Wild Woods In One Age, Or A Car Breaking Down At Night On A Lonely Road In Another.