The Doors of Eden

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Evolution is inevitable once you have an imperfectly self-replicating system in an environment of limited resources.

Mal was reading English Lit at Oxford—an establishment so exclusive that they had a whole other verb for what you did there.

she had borrowed hope at a ruinous interest rate—one that she had no chance of paying back.

there is something magical about the boundary between land and water that nurtures complexity. The shifting biomes, dry to wet, wet to dry, mean twice as many predators, twice as many kinds of prey. There are opportunities for forays inland or out to the open ocean. To adapt to the surf and shore is to shoulder more burdens than to commit wholly to either land or water.

gardeners are the great tyrants of nature.

Lee wanted to storm off again, except she’d already stormed off and had nowhere to storm further off to.

“You are gullible. Surrounded by people you don’t know, with your leaders even less knowable, and you are gullible. Someone says a thing to you strongly enough, you believe them. You take confidence for truth.