The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee. - Carl Sagan

وتكمن الأهمية الإنسانية للخيال العلمي في أنها قد تتحول إلى تجربة عن المستقبل وكاستكشاف لمستقبل بديل وكمحاولات لتقليل حجم الصدمة في المستقبل. وتلك هي بعض أسباب الجاذبية الكبيرة التي يتمتع بها الخيال العلمي بين الشباب، فهم الذين سيعيشون في المستقبل.

Perhaps the most wrenching by-product of the scientific revolution has been to render untenable many of our most cherished and most comforting beliefs. The tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors has been replaced by a cold, immense, indifferent Universe in which humans are relegated to obscurity. But I see the emergence in our consciousness of a Universe of a magnificence, and an intricate, elegant order far beyond anything our ancestors imagined. And if much about the Universe can be understood in terms of a few simple laws of Nature, those wishing to believe in God can certainly ascribe those beautiful laws to a Reason underpinning all of Nature. My own view is that it is far better to understand the Universe as it really is than to pretend to a Universe as we might wish it to be.

The greatest part of human existence was spent in such a time. Over the dying embers of the campfire, on a moonless night, we watched the stars.