You were fool enough to think that one hundred and fifty million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man’s ce… - Brian Aldiss

The only sort of tasks worth being set were impossible ones.

Far from being unnatural, as you call, it is commonplace when you have evil conditions. Poverty is more strong than morality. That’s another reason why for the world must submit to progress. Misery must be decreased before everyone will choke to death on it.

Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode.