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These reactionaries preserved their moral purity (as reactionaries so often do) by not reading,
Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo.
What they did, which I found most admirable then and still do now, was to write as if they were indifferent to ideology—something many of us writers in the Western democracies had a hard time doing. They wrote as free men write.
There was no communication; there can be no understanding.
Tolstoyan approach, in which a war is described not only from the generals’ point of view but also through the eyes of housewives, prisoners, and boys of sixteen, or an alien visitation is described not only by knowledgeable scientists but also by its effects on commonplace people.
The Polish novelist Stanislaw Lem called it “the myth of our cognitive universalism.”
Goodness. . . . You got to make it out of badness. . . . Because there isn’t anything else to make it out of.
the man has decided he’s got the Zone completely figured out, and so he’ll soon screw up and kick the bucket. And he can go right ahead. But not with me around.
Captain Willy Herzog, nicknamed the Hog.
“Pray!” I yell. “Stalkers cut in line at the gates of heaven!”
We’re floating in silence, and only one thing is on my mind: how I’ll twist the cap off the flask.
What’s so great about your Europe? The eternal boredom? You work all day, watch TV all night; when that’s done, you’re off to bed with some bitch, breeding delinquents. The strikes, the demonstrations, the never-ending politics . . . To hell with your Europe!”
“For the altar to science.
I can live on my salary, and I’ll drink my bonuses.
I want to cry, but I can’t. And there’s nothing but emptiness ahead. Only boredom, melancholy, routine.
She’s coming toward me, my beauty, my girl, showing her lovely legs, her skirt swaying above her knees as she walks; all the men ogle her as she passes by, while she keeps walking straight, without looking around, and for some reason I immediately figure out she’s looking for me.
“punctuality is the courtesy of kings.
“You’re muddling things, Schuhart,” said Bony with distaste. “Why the secrecy, I ask?” “This business is full of secrets,” said Redrick. “It’s a difficult business.”
He didn’t know the driver, a new guy, some pimply beaked kid, one of the thousands who had recently flocked to Harmont looking for hair-raising adventures, untold riches, international fame, or some special religion; they came in droves but ended up as taxi drivers, waiters, construction workers, and bouncers in brothels—yearning, untalented, tormented by nebulous desires, angry at the whole world, horribly disappointed, and convinced that here, too, they’d been cheated.
the longer they stayed, the more thoroughly they calmed down and resigned themselves to things, and the less they worried about what exactly they were doing in Harmont.
She was silky, luscious, sensuously curvy, without a single flaw, a single extra ounce—a hundred and twenty pounds of twenty-year-old delectable flesh—and then there were the emerald eyes, which shone from within, and the full moist lips and the even white teeth and the jet-black hair that gleamed in the sun, carelessly thrown over one shoulder; the sunlight flowed over her body, drifting from her shoulders to her stomach and hips, throwing shadows between her almost-bare breasts. He was standing over her and openly checking her out while she looked up at him, smiling knowingly; then she
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“And what exactly will you be keeping in mind?” he inquired politely. “Oh, everything you said,” replied Noonan cheerfully, leaning back in his armchair. “Every last word.” “And what did I say?” “That’s irrelevant,” said Noonan. “Whatever you said, we’ll keep it all in mind.”
Aren’t humans absurd? I suppose we like praise for its own sake. The way children like ice cream. It’s an inferiority complex, that’s what it is. Praise assuages our insecurities. And ridiculously so. How could I rise in my own opinion?
On the one hand, we are forced to admit, on the other hand, we can’t dispute.
The hell with it! One way or another, I won’t live till the end.
Either they’ve been up since dawn, or they’re still going strong from last night, he thought. That’s the fashion in town nowadays—parties around the clock. A vigorous generation we’ve raised, hardworking and untiring in their pursuits .
By hastily submitting a victorious report, Richard, you have demonstrated immaturity.
Your medal isn’t worth the metal it’s made of.
The old-timers are gone, the young ones are clueless, and on top of that, the prestige of the craft isn’t what it once was. The coming thing is technology, robot-stalkers.”
The problem is we don’t notice the years pass, he thought. Screw the years—we don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places.
Pigs can always find mud.
For humanity everything passes without a trace. Of course, it’s possible that by randomly pulling chestnuts out of this fire, we’ll eventually stumble on something that will make life on Earth completely unbearable. That would be bad luck. But you have to admit, that’s a danger humanity has always faced.”
“You see, I’ve long since become unused to discussing humanity as a whole. Humanity as a whole is too stable a system, nothing upsets it.”
“There are answers,” said Valentine with an ironic smile. “Lots of them, pick any you like.”
Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption—that an alien race would be psychologically human.”
intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural acts.”
Intelligence is a complex instinct which hasn’t yet fully matured. The idea is that instinctive activity is always natural and useful. A million years will pass, the instinct will mature, and we will cease making the mistakes which are probably an integral part of intelligence. And then, if anything in the universe changes, we will happily become extinct—again, precisely because we’ve lost the art of making mistakes, that is, trying various things not prescribed by a rigid code.”
Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.”
The God hypothesis, for example, allows you to have an unparalleled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing
‘You ask: what makes man great?’” he quoted. “‘Is it that he re-created nature? That he harnessed forces of almost-cosmic proportions? That in a brief time he has conquered the planet and opened a window onto the universe? No! It is that despite all this, he has survived, and intends to continue doing so.’”
So-called serious xenologists try to justify interpretations that are much more respectable and flattering to human vanity. For example, that the Visit hasn’t happened yet, that the real Visit is yet to come. Some higher intelligence came to Earth and left us containers with samples of their material culture. They expect us to study these samples and make a technological leap, enabling us to send back a signal indicating we’re truly ready for contact.
here’s another one. The Visit did take place, but it is by no means over. We’re actually in contact as we speak, we just don’t know it. The aliens are holed up in the Zones and are carefully studying us, simultaneously preparing us for the ‘time of cruel miracles.’”
Otherwise, you work and work, but you never think about why or what for, grapple with what might happen, try to lighten your load .
Listen, maybe that’s how it should be? Let things take their course, and we’ll muddle through somehow. He was right about that: mankind’s most impressive achievement is that it has survived and intends to continue doing so.
What would be the most clever way to go about it? Using the principle of least action.
I’ve been run off my feet. Sometimes I ask myself, Why the hell are we always in such a whirl? For the money? But why in the world do we need money, if all we ever do is keep working?”
People imagined all sorts of things. In reality, nothing was ever the way people imagined.
“Money doesn’t stink.
Redrick forced himself to cut this memory short. Thinking about it was repellent,
A man needs money in order to never think about it.
