More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
…but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Fans packed the restaurants twenty-four-seven, but the waitstaff didn’t complain—nerds tend to overtip. I’d heard that the casinos were less happy with the level of gambling. Turns out nerds understand probability.
Thank God for family. And thank God for a couple thousand miles of distance. When everyone was home at the same time, I could generally take it for about half an hour before I retreated into the basement. Usually, Dad followed about ten minutes later. There’d be the mutual eye-rolling, and we’d settle down without a word, to read or watch TV. My father and I were both loners by disposition. We could sit in the same room for hours, not say five words to each other, and both be completely comfortable. It drove my mother crazy.
‘Stereotypes are valid first-order approximations.’ The man was the cliché of the old-time, bible-thumping, fire-breathing preacher: tall and thin, with cheekbones and teeth that seemed to protrude from his face. Even when he smiled, he glowered.
How are you supposed to feel if you are forced to do what you would have done anyway?
Yeah, they still make duct tape. And it still holds the universe together.
way outbound. As I continued
It took a lot of energy to reduce source materials to their monatomic form, and it took as much energy to drop them into the proper place in the creation matrix.
Such 3D printing had had to wait for cheap fusion energy before becoming practical technology. There was also a problem dealing with volatile materials, because of all the energy involved. Attempts to print C4 or Semtex, for instance,
It would take ten days to reach perihelion in our race around the sun.
Project planning isn’t about avoiding changes, it’s about controlling them. No project plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”
sat back, staring into space, so preoccupied that I stopped patting Spike. I was reminded of my primary duty by a furry head butting against my chin. “Sorry, your highness.” I smiled at the cat and resumed justifying my existence.
“How does the old joke go? I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”
The hopping around and verbalizations were really very human-looking, and to my shame I laughed a little. Afterward, Archimedes kicked the tree and said something monosyllabic. I marked that as an F-Bomb-analogue, and I don’t mean maybe.
People’s capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me.
Original Bob was a bit of a lone wolf, and you tend to work the same way, expecting me to tag along. That’s not working so well for me.”
Carbon-fiber cables ran from the hub to the rim, providing most of the structural support. Three thicker spokes provided elevator access from rim to hub. The donut was oriented perpendicular to the sun, and mirrors between the rim and hub reflected sunlight into the interior through the transparent roof of the rim. Everything was designed as simply as possible, to minimize construction time and material requirements.
I knew that because not only had the animals been killed but their intestinal flora (or the local equivalent) had been killed at the same time. There was no bloating, no rotting from the inside out.
belly laughs are one of the best things about being sentient, and you should never miss a chance for one.
