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Visions and illusions
(covers information from a vision or illusion)

"I like robots."
– Albert Macklin, 1953 ("Far Beyond the Stars")

Albert Macklin was a Human science fiction writer for Incredible Tales magazine in the 1950s. His specialty was stories about robots and other futuristic machines. He was a fair bongos player.

A shy man with a stammer, Macklin's professed preference for robots over Humans was based largely on their being "uncomplicated". Though the other staff writers teased him about his predictable subject matter, Macklin took it in stride and his work was good enough to secure a contract to produce a novel about robots.

The stories Macklin wrote for the magazine included "Federation and Empire", "1001: First Odyssey", and "Me, Android".

When editor Douglas Pabst was unwilling to print Benny Russell's story about a black captain of a futuristic space station, Macklin suggested altering the story to make it a dream of a present-day man. Macklin once sold a novel to Gnome Press. (DS9: "Far Beyond the Stars")

Albert Macklin was played by Colm Meaney. His last name comes from the script.
The character was an homage to Isaac Asimov and his fondness for playing bongo drums was loosely inspired by the late Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman. (Star Trek Monthly issue 40; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (pp. 536-537); Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 2, p. 8))
The authors of the Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 2, p. 8) thought Albert Macklin "might have existed in reality, or perhaps only in certain reaches of Ben Sisko's mind."

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