Our heroes are human heroes. That's a very new situation. Most other societies have had, right at their center, the worship of something transcendent: a god, a spirit, a natural force, the universe, whatever it is -- something else that is being worshiped. We've slightly lost the habit of doing that, which is, I think, why we're particularly drawn to nature.

"In the end, it is the stories that survive us."

What people need and what they want may be very different.

"The colony is the place where the project of a new humanity is to be tested, where the dream of a world without borders is to be realized, where the dream of a world without races is to be realized, where the dream of a world without nations is to be realized, where the dream of a world without classes is to be realized, where the dream of a world without genders is to be realized, where the dream of a world without religions is to be realized."