Sea of Tranquility

by Emily St. John Mandel

“Evidence suggests they feel rather more oppressed by the British than by the heat,”

“Does anyone want us anywhere?” he heard himself ask. “Why do we assume these far-flung places are ours?”

If we were living in a simulation, how would we know it was a simulation?

bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection.

This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.

if definitive proof emerges that we’re living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be So what. A life lived in a simulation is still a life.