Sign in with Facebook
“In all of our ancestral legends about space travel, didn’t old-time authors envision humanity as the brash young upstarts? Intrepidly setting forth into the unknown, facing dire threats and deadly foes, making countless mistakes, but always persevering, brilliantly, against the odds? Moreover, in myth, weren’t we often assisted by some wise elder race? Admirable, patient beings, unresentful of our success and irreverent gumption. In those early romances, movies and threevees, from Roddenberry space operas to Tolkien fantasies, there were always kindly older brothers, unjealous and dependable; perhaps a bit stuffy and exasperated, but always sagacious, forbearing and kind.”
― The Ancient Ones
― The Ancient Ones
“People—human-type people, my own people—are constantly on a quest for an identity. Some lucky ones find the thing they want to be already inside themselves, or in a healthy family or community. Far too many of us, however, latch onto a simplified externality that seems to offer all the answers and invest our sense of meaning in it. We make some half-baked philosophy our driving force. Something we picked up reading the sort of novels and graphic stuff where first-person narrators opine bombastically about how the galaxy really works and what makes people really tick and How You Ought To Be.”
― Machine
― Machine
“As it turned out, imagining the fate of seven billion people was far less emotionally affecting than imagining the fate of one.”
― Seveneves
― Seveneves
“He couldn’t see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn’t. And there never was an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.”
― Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
― Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
“Among the elite, Stuarts had given way to Smiths, Sirs to Misters, and family names were no longer of help for guessing social standing. But the foundations of inequity remained intact, since the primal urges that have always led humans to seek ascendancy over their kind run deeper than the ebb and flow of social tide. But for as long as people failed to grasp this simple truth they applauded the power of pigheaded toil and lucky foresight to make moguls out of yokels, and found comfort in the belief that social imbalance was only pernicious if it derived from things other than skill, which was seen as a fair gauge of merit, much like swordsmanship had been regarded as a fair measure of worth in the days when disputes were settled by duels.”
― Cognition
― Cognition
Mark’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mark’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2 books
|
243 friends
224 books
|
73 friends
13 books
|
11 friends
7 books
|
43 friends
0 books
|
41 friends
48 books
|
76 friends
281 books
|
33 friends
1,148 books
|
361 friends
More friends…
Polls voted on by Mark
Lists liked by Mark
