Once you consider the premise that Episodes I through III are not live-action movies with extensive special effects, but rather animated features wit… - David Brin

Where it is strongest, it must still contend ceaselessly with macho, paranoiac, homogenizing, and other traditional forces that continue battling over the minds and actions of women and men – forces that may indeed be far more “natural” to us human animals, who are so innately egotistical and afraid. Add to this a plague of self-righteousness, in which both individuals and political factions seem more interested in the sweet mantras of their slogans than in finding pragmatic solutions to modern problems, and you have a formula for troubled times ahead.

But then, of course, it could have been worse. This may not be the best of all possible worlds. But Pangloss never met Murphy. And things could have been very much worse, indeed. The pyramid loomed ahead, separated by a broad river from the main part of an alien metropolis that had once been named Cal’mari.

What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.