Tell me who can I trust? I wanna fly to the stars.
Janelle Monáe, 'Sally Ride', The Electric Lady, 2013

“Why wasn’t a poet sent to the moon? What if Starwars’ Robot R2-D2 were able to scan the world’s arts for their strengths and weaknesses, making available its output after scanning to aid artists in their search for new aesthetic solutions. What if Starwars translator C-3PO could make translations for audiences in their bewilderment with new forms, translation from one kind of artist to another, or become go-between for scientists, technologists and artists? Would it help? Would it be of redeeming social value?

“The side effects of technology, such as the pollution of our planet and the danger of ultimate destruction, are not solved. Technology breeds the need for more technology which breeds more side effects in a self-perpetuating binge.

“The foresight required for the solutions needed must come not only from the deepest of scientific thought, but also from the deepest of artistic thought. The artistic side of the scientist as well as the scientific side of the artist must continually be cultivated. The artistic scientist and the scientific artist have suffered subjugation by those who have sought power and control at the expense of human and aesthetic values.”

Pauline Oliveros, Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-80, Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984, p. 176

"'Bloodchild'... [is] a number of... things...
On one level, it's a love story between two very different beings.
On another, it's a coming-of-age story...
On a third level, 'Bloodchild' is my pregnant man story."

Octavia E. Butler,
Afterword to
"Bloodchild"
(1984 / 2005)

HE AWOKE – and wanted Mars.
The valleys, he thought.
What would it be like to trudge among them?
Great and greater yet:
the dream grew as he became fully conscious,
the dream and the yearning.
He could almost feel the enveloping presence of the other world...

Philip K. Dick
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
April 1966

Martin, Stephen J. et al (2012) “Global Honey Bee Viral Landscape Altered by a Parasitic Mite”,
Science, 08/06, 336 (6086), pp. 1304-1306, DOI: 10.1126/science.1220941
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6086/1304.abstract