Gregory Benford

Not sure. When don’t know, do experiment.

Minds embodies in strange shapes would still find themselves sharpened against evolution’s ceaseless whetstone.

What challenges would they face? In the end the universe as a whole was life’s ultimate opponent.

That mood had persisted when she finally got home and, unable to sleep, watched some TV. It was as usual, a cacophony, which combined with the other audio media gave a disposable pop culture that made every moment but the present seem quaint, bloodless, dead.

As a political commentator of the time put it, most real-world people she knew thought of Washington, D.C., as a whorehouse where every four years ordinary folk got to elect a new piano player.

Exercise erased cares.

Well, this was what dads were for: saying the unsayable when you needed it.

Given a choice between existential despair and rapt religious fervor, her crowd chose marijuana.

She had long ago stopped counting how many times the 0.38 g of Mars had helped them through crucial moments. It had proved the only useful aspect of the planet.

Government doesn’t often move quickly, but when they do, it’s like an elephant stampede.

Science’s success did not need a God to explain it; the world was enough.

He watched her putting away bacon and toast.

“I remember breakfasts like that.”

“First Law of Thermodynamics still applies. If you eat it, and you don’t burn it off, you sit on it.”

“You burn it, looks like. Exercise?

“Worry. Saves time and you don’t have to shower.”

This was what never failed to stir her—the unfathomable gulf between today’s thinking and the way the ancients thought. They were truly alien, not merely innocent agrarians with a foolish faith.