To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. - Isaac Asimov

It was a ribbon world – of which the Galaxy boasts sufficient, but among which, the inhabited variety is a rarity. It was a world, in other words, where the two halves face the monotonous extremes of heat and cold, while the region of possible life is the birdling ribbon of the twilight zone. Such a world invariably sounds uninviting to those who have not tried it, but there exists spots, strategically placed – and Radole City was located in such a one. It spread along the soft slopes of the foothills before the hacked-out mountains that backed it along the rim of the cold hemisphere and held off the frightful ice. The warm, dry air of the sun-half spilled over, and from the mountains was piped the water – and between the two, Radole City became a continuous garden, swimming in the eternal morning of an eternal June.

My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required.

It is by the Imperial Capital that contemporaries (and posterity, too) judge an Empire, and its magnificence impresses them mightily and leads them to judge the Emperor a great man and hero, even though it may all be based on robbery, and though the provinces of the Empire may be sunk in misery.