By and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at age wi...
White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky the gulls are circling like white flakes. Rain squalls blow past like gray slanting sails, and blue gaps open in the sky. The air brightens. A cold sil...
Remember, sex is never a thing you just had. Sex is the intercourse, the merging or convergence, of who the two of you are—your spirits merging. People ask, “How was it for you?” The reply is often, “It was great.” But is this really the ri...
Maloney looked around my room and nodded like he approved of the extravagance surrounding him: the inch-thick carpet with its diamond designs, the half moon flock of the wallpaper, and the antique furniture, polished to a museum quality shine. The tw...
Most of the big shore places were closed now. And there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of the ferryboat across the sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away till gradually I became aware of ...
Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I'm certain that he wouldn't think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I'll watch him closely at the next full moon. He'...
A strange cold fear gripped him as he looked down at that angelic face resting against his shoulder. Her thick dark lashes lay heavy against her perfect olive skin like two perfect dark crescent moons concealing those glorious starry green eyes burde...
But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of this. He had always wanted to be a normal person. To be at eas...
I brought the newspaper close up to my eyes to get a better view of George Pollucci's face, spotlighted like a three-quarter moon against a vague background of brick and black sky. I felt he had something important to tell me, and that whatever it wa...
The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, spring nor fall. A thermal haze of inexpressible sweetness, though bearing tiny bits of grit or mica, had eased into the Valley from the industrial re...
You're a big boy, No. You'll figure something out. Just make sure it includes the groveling." -Abby It come to all of us. Especially those of us foolish enough to fall in love with women who have minds of their own. If you will recall, your own siste...
In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress...
While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am n...
Perhaps it's the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle's burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, ...
At bed-time I went into my room and put out the light. I didn't get undressed. I lay on my bed and looked out of the window at the stars. I read in a book that the stars can take you anywhere. I've never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helme...
We must try to remember everything, every movement, every stretch, every convulsion that made us how we move as we readily grow in our outer body that encompasses the planets, the suns and the moons in every other body that we touch, in every other m...
I felt the taste of mortality in my mouth, and at that moment I understood that I was not going to live forever. It takes a long time to learn that, but when you finally do, everything changes inside you, you can never be the same again. I was sevent...
But here's the most incredible thing about it: the philosopher isn't proposing that as a concept; he's simply articulating what humans believe about themselves. That first they thing and therefore then they exist. What follows on from that is even wo...
The past doesn't exist. There is nothing to be sorry for. Today is when we start to live. Look... look at the sea. The sea has no past. It is just there. It will never ask us to explain. The stars, the moon are there to light our way, to shine for us...
My phone started to vibrate and I flipped it open. Yes, I'm the only person that doesn't have an iPhone. The phone talked to me. "Jackson, how’s it going?" "Hi, Echo. Veeva Stackpoole’s here." Silence. "What does she want?" "Well, at first she wa...
Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as i...
