"Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work—The writer might have died long ago." Ch. pg. 52

"I'd come to realize over the years that anything created by mankind had error, mischief and bureaucratic officialdom hardwired at inception, and the fictional world was no different."
Ch. pg. 54

Unlike the real world, where practical difficulties in civil engineering might be a defining factor in the scale of a facility, here it was not a consideration at all. Indeed the size of the plant could expand and contract depending on need, a little like Mary Poppins's suitcase, which was hardly surprising, as they...