Excited about this one. Not only a big fan of Garland because of his films, but he is also an underrated writer. <i>The Beach</i> was an impressive first novel. I thought he was gonna interrupt you though when you said he didn't venture into space yet," he did write the screenplay for sunshine :)<br><br>Also on the issue of the frontier of science and not being able to follow cutting edge research I was reminded of Ted Chiang's short story <i>the evolution of human science</i> (<a href=""https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679)"">https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679)</a>"