"Something tells me that this isn't going to be as simple as it looks." "What is?" Wald said, raising his eyebrows. "Nothing, of course. But hope spr… - James Blish

You’ll remember I told you I was interested in the history of science. That involves trying to understand why there wasn’t any science for so long, and why it went into eclipse almost every time it was rediscovered. I think I know why now. I think the human mind goes through a sort of cycle of fear. It can only take so much accumulated knowledge, and then it panics, and starts inventing reasons to throw everything over and go back to a Dark Age…every time with a new, invented mystical reason.

We often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as n-dimensional—it’s like modern sex, any number may be played with.

But now the shots began—not many, but one shot is a fusillade if there have been no shots before.