That anyone should need to write a book advising people to "eat food" could be taken as a measure of our alienation and confusion. Or we can choose to see it in a more positive light and count ourselves fortunate indeed that there is once again real ...
Many of the best fantastic stories begin in a leisurely way, set in commonplace surroundings, with exact, meticulous descriptions of an ordinary background, much as in a 'realistic' tale. Then a gradual - or it may be sometimes a shockingly abrupt - ...
Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.
The black rock was sharp-edged, hot, and hard as corundum; it seemed not merely alien but impervious to life. Yet on the southern face of almost every rock the lichens grew, yellow, rusty-brown, yellow-green, like patches of dirty paint daubed on the...
The sound of his purging next to me, long and deep and often was like a backbeat throughout the night. He's been wrestling with visions of the spirit world, alien landscapes like inverted Photoshop jungle lakes, plants merging into the sky and insect...
I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, l...
It's because his wife left him. That's why he's acting funny. She left him the other night. While she was putting her bags into the taxi he was outside on the footpath begging her to stay. On his knees! Why are men so embarrassing? Bev
If someone would have asked him to describe that moment, he would have failed miserably. The only thing he knew was this is how it felt to love and be loved in return. Till now love as a feeling was alien to him but tonight he had witnessed its defin...
He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence was lost it was never regained. So he took his son fishing and s...
Separating one's “self” physically from the world (as an unseen entity) alienates the human being from the facts of a sensual world and its realities. In order to have a self, you must provide a story for that self. Whether it is the tale of past...
The clandestine operation tucked several floors below ground level inside a Los Angeles high-rise had never before made her queasy. Today the copper walls, marble flooring, refrigerated temperature and minimal furnishings took discomfort to a new lev...
In many ways I'm similar to Barack Obama, who also has a strange name but was raised by a white American mother. His background is far more complicated than his name would suggest. Furthermore, the fact that I was a child during the hostage crisis ha...
Nine out of 10 Hollywood aliens look like us. Oh, sure, they might be short, big-eyed and hairless - decked out in skin smoother than gourmet prosciutto. But really, these creatures from afar are usually so anthropomorphic (aside from their grey comp...
Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the ...
If an alien race lands on the planet Earth tomorrow and asks me to prove I'm really here, what do I do? What do I give them? What do I tell them? What do I show them? I can't sing or dance. I can't paint. I've never built anything, and I've never con...
My kids download 10 games. They play them all for two minutes. They throw away the eight they don't like. Then they play those last two obsessively for a month. That's alien to those of us who buy a $60 game and play it for 40 or 50 hours. The discov...
I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he ...
From very early on in my childhood - four, five years old - I felt alien to the human race. I felt very comfortable with thinking I was from another planet, because I felt disconnected - I was very tall and skinny, and I didn't look like anybody else...
Do I believe in aliens? No. I think there could be. Do I believe in God? No, I think there could be. Do I believe that Jesus actually existed? No. I think he could have done. A few things I've seen. A few things I've read. A few things I've watched h...
Life is a relentless expulsion from where we come from and an ongoing deportation to alien realms. We are in exile and our greatest dream is to return to the lost land. It is the greatest dream because no matter how long our exile is going to last, t...
When I sing along with Britney Spears I will sing in an American accent. But eventually I found my own voice. My songs are so brutally honest, it would be alien to sing in any accent other than my own. Don't get me wrong - I can imitate singers. I ca...
