They Speak Very Well Of

"i Think I Know The Real Reason." "which Is?" "alcohol In The Dust Clouds. Goddamn Stuff Is Everywhere. Any Lousy Species Ever Invents The Telescope And The Spectroscope And Starts Looking In Between The Stars, What Do They Find?" He Knocked The Glass On The Table. "loads Of Stuff, But Much Of It Alcohol." He Drank From The Glass. "humanoids Are The Galaxy's Way Of Trying To Get Rid Of All That Alcohol."

I Think A Lot Of People Are Frightened Of Technology And Frightened Of Change, And The Way To Deal With Something You're Frightened Of Is To Make Fun Of It. That's Why Science Fiction Fans Are Dismissed As Geeks And Nerds.

If You Have Any Helpful Suggestions I'd Be Pleased To Hear Them. If All You Can Do Is Make Snide Insinuations Then It Would Probably Benefit All Concerned If You Bestowed The Fruits Of Your Prodigious Wit On Someone With The Spare Time To Give Them The Consideration They Doubtless Deserve.

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.

It Was A Truism That All Civilizations Were Basically Neurotic Until They Made Contact With Everybody Else And Found Their Place Within The Ever-changing Meta-civilisation Of Other Beings, Because, Until Then, During The Stage When They Honestly Believed They Might Be Entirely Alone In Existence, All Solo Societies Were Possessed Of Both An Inflated Sense Of Their Own Importance And A Kind Of Existential Terror At The Sheer Scale And Apparent Emptiness Of The Universe.