Exercise erased cares. - Gregory Benford

Shanna put on the last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth and turned up the gain.
Ludwig von Cornball, they had called him back at Moonbase One. Hipitude: post-postmodern irony. All because she played ol’ Ludwig so much—but who was more appropriate? What spirit better expressed the grandeur of an expedition to the edge of the solar system?

A science fiction writer is—or should be—constrained by what is, or logically might be. That can mean simple fidelity to facts (which, in science, are always more important than theories—though Lord knows the two help shape each other, undermining the convenient, complacent separation of observer and observed). To me it also means heeding the authentic, the actual and concrete. Bad fiction uses the glossy generality; good writing needs the smattering of detail, the unrelenting busy mystery of the real.

Thing about crazies is, they’re crazy. You can’t even understand them in retrospect.