Of All Possible Worlds

“Wh-who are you? And what do you want?”

“Joseph Burns, a poor but honest newspaperman.” He considered for a moment. “Well, poor, anyway.”

The human mind is lit by an elemental sense of wonder, a probing, restless curiosity that is our primate heritage and that from its beginnings has sought a knowledge, some knowledge, of the future. To satisfy that need there has come into being a massive and thoroughly modern creation, science fiction, the literature of extrapolative, industrial man.