More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
May 31 - October 19, 2019
(N.B. All characters in this story are entirely fictitious and only exist in the Author’s subconscious. Psychoanalysts please apply at the Tradesmens’ Entrance.)
after a most successful stratosphere flight, may be said to have resulted in a draw,
The whole thing would have cost a great deal of money had we intended to pay for it.
With an expression of grim determination, which I had to assume several times before Ivan Schnitzel, our official photographer, was satisfied, I pressed the starting button and—rather to our surprise—the ship began to move.
All around us, in the commonest things we do, lie endless possibilities. So many things might happen, and don’t—but may some day.
The trouble with present-day science fiction, as with a good many other things, is that in striving after the bizarre it misses the obvious. What it needs is not more imagination or even less imagination. It is some imagination.
C. 1939?!
News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of truth. Only good reports need confirmation.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
‘We don’t care where the oxygen goes If it doesn’t get into the wine…’
"Noah ... where the water goes ..."
Chesterton
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wine-and-water/
Jurgen,
Der Tag,
The day
the Law which ruled that no community could remain on the same spot for more than three lifetimes.
if two were company, three were the reverse.
For winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins…
cast
History, it has been said, never repeats itself but historical situations recur.
‘So you still haven’t guessed!’
"That's no moon."
Obi Wan Kinobi
There was always a skull hidden behind Nature’s most smiling face.
milliards
‘Who started the rumour,’ he said to Mitchell as they met at the port, ‘that the British were reserved and stand-offish? Heaven help me if I ever meet a demonstrative Englishman.’
We’ll just have to say to the dinosaurs: “Move over a bit—here comes Homo sap!” And the transister shall inherit the earth.’
‘Qui s’excuse s’accuse,’
He who excuses himself, accuses himself.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/qui%20s'excuse%20s'accuse
myrmecologist.’
‘This atoll was supposed to be uninhabited, but this was a considerable error. It actually had a population of several hundred millions—’ ‘What!’ gasped everybody. ‘—several hundred millions,’ continued Purvis calmly, ‘of which number, one was human.
Jorkens
Even a small iceberg would be as disconcerting to the Florida Chamber of Commerce as a small baby to an unmarried lady.
Less than half our tour of duty had passed when the head of the transport section suddenly announced that he was going outside with a butterfly net to catch meteors. He didn’t become violent, but had to be shipped hastily back to Earth.
‘Oh, go to hell!’ I’d snarl back—and then I’d have an anxious five minutes while I straightened things out with the rather literal-minded Navigation Robot.
the development of communications started it. As soon as anyone on Earth could see and talk to anyone else by pressing a button, most of the need for cities vanished.
Someone else should be telling this story—someone who understands the funny kind of football they play down in South America. Back in Moscow, Idaho, we grab the ball and run with it. In the small but prosperous republic which I’ll call Perivia, they kick it around with their feet. And that is nothing to what they do to the referee.
‘It’s hard nowadays to find an honest man who stays bought.’
“any increasingly complex technology will look like magic“
Technology as it develops is a prayer… but prayer is by definition a subversion of reason. There is no Loophole there.
Swan of Tuonela
Sibelius ("Finlandia") - 4 Tales of the Kalevala
pan-danus-clad
we must not let our emotions sway our logic Indeed, we must do the precise opposite: we must let our logic sway our emotions!
it was quite daring, back in 1962, to suggest that Russians might be decent human beings.
one star mangled spanner.’
‘siseneG’ First published in Analog, May 1984 Collected in Astounding Days When I wrote this, I hinted that it would be my last short story. Well, it is certainly the shortest. *** And God said: ‘Lines Aleph Zero to Aleph One—Delete.’ And the Universe ceased to exist. Then She pondered for several aeons, and sighed. ‘Cancel Programme GENESIS,’ She ordered. It never had existed.
Chrislamic Fundamentalists
Prophet Fatima Magdalene (née Ruby Goldenburg)
responsible adults should be allowed to commit suicide in any way they pleased—by alcohol, cocaine or even tobacco—as long as they did not kill innocent bystanders during the process.
Remember that old saying of Tsiolkovski’s: “Earth is the cradle of humankind, but you cannot live in the cradle forever.”
in danger of provoking an outbreak of Utopianism,
Ignoring the likelihood (certainty) of both corporate/commercial and organized-crime abuses.
