It is this conception of the unity of the human career which is perhaps the greatest achievement of historical study, since it gained a place analogous to that of natural science.

To the present writer a careful study of the facts now available seems to leave no doubt that civilization was born at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean.

In any case, in so far as our knowledge of the universe carries us, the advent of civilization for the first time on our globe represents the highest ascent of the life processes to which evolution had anywhere attained.

Today the traveller on the Nile enters a wonderland at whose gates rise the colossal pyramids of which he has had visions perhaps from earliest childhood.

First Light' is nonfiction, a true story about astronomers who are looking for light coming from the edge of the universe. It tells how science is really done - and science is a lot weirder and more human than most people realize.

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living.

I liked art history. Also liked the gender ratio, especially compared to applied math and physics.

Any real virtual reality enthusiast can look back at VR science fiction. It's not about playing games... 'The Matrix,' 'Snow Crash,' all this fiction was not about sitting in a room playing video games. It's about being in a parallel digital world that exists alongside our own, communicating with other people, playing with other people.