“ Most of us have given very little thought to what we mean by the actual moment. What do we mean by 'now?' How much time is it? Behind 'now' stretches the past, ahead is the future, but is it itself an infinitesimal instant? Do we merely exist as a flash, as a series of flashes, so to speak, of no duration at all, between a past gone by and a future still to come, or does 'now' bulge into both past and future? ”

“ The writer of the tale had a chance there of propounding an interesting bit of science by having some of the people on the ship asking how it was that none of the throngs of Atlantis below seemed to notice them in any way, and then having it explained to them, as far as the people of Atlantis were concerned, the ship, the sphere and the explorers in time simply did not exist could not exist, because these people had already lived through this moment of time once when there was no ship, no sphere, and no travelers-in-time, and were now simply reliving that same moment of time again. ”

“ Your foreword states that this tale contains the best science of all the prize-winning stories submitted.
"Now, in a scientifiction story, I quite understand, and appreciate, that wealth of imagination, such as inventions, new powers, discoveries of new chemical, physical and psychic laws, and their adaptations, is wholly creditable to the authors, because, indeed, as you state, 'extravagant fiction today—cold fact tomorrow.'
"Now, to come to my point it is not, however, good science to cause a scientific impossibility, a logical impossibility, a direct contradiction, to appear in a story. ”