Since the Columbia accident, the Russian space agency, or the Russian space program, has been literally carrying the load bringing us all the supplies we need on the Progress vehicle, smaller amounts on the Soyuz vehicles. ↗
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use. ↗
And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature. ↗
A fashionable milieu is one in which everybody's opinion is made up of the opinion of all the others. Has everybody a different opinion? Then it is a literary milieu. ↗
Every time I get on an airplane I have a routine. I cover the inside of my nostrils with anti-bacterial ointment. I'm popping Zicam like it's candy. And I drink, literally, from L.A. to New York, six bottles of water. ↗