Brendan I. Koerner

A surprising number of American skyjackers were not yet old enough to drink or sometimes even drive. These adolescents were generally inept at planning their crimes, and few of their capers met with any success; most seemed to end within moments of starting, usually after a fatherly pilot convinced the nervous teen to hand over his gun.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.

I can't think of another enterprise other than being a homeowner that can't have its debt restructured in bankruptcy. Corporations can but a homeowner can't? Now with securitization the homeowner can't go to the owner of the loan and work things out.

If a man made himself an expert in any particular branch of human activity, there would result the strong tendency that a peculiar aptitude towards the same branch would be found among some of his descendants.