it explained his rejection of any sort of fantasy , even science fiction ... and , jack knew from his own school experience , techies like richard usually ate and drank sf ... as long as it was the hard stuff , that was , your basic heinlein , asimov , arthur c. clarke , larry niven - spare us the metaphysical bullshit of the robert silverbergs and barry malzbergs , please , but we 'll read the stuff where they get all the stellar quadrants and logarithms right until it 's running out of our ears .