Incandescence Quotes

“Parantham finally realized that selecting a star on the map enabled a sub-menu with the unassuming option "Go to star". Choosing this did not change the map's viewpoint or magnification; rather, it caused the map to inquire politely, "Are you sure you wish to travel to this star?”
― Greg Egan, Incandescence

“I hope you theorists know what you’re doing.’ ‘I can assure you that we don’t. The geometry is still beyond us. All I learnt in the void was that our best guess so far is certainly wrong.”
― Greg Egan, Incandescence

“We’ve been half right about a lot of things, but there’s something missing from our theories, something whose nature we haven’t even guessed yet. If we don’t learn to understand it, it will kill us.”
― Greg Egan, Incandescence

“I was recruited by the dead,’ Zak said. ‘Not in any rush to join them in their silence, but from the urgent need to understand what they might have thought and done that could survive them, that could speak across the ages, that could be continued even now.”
― Greg Egan, Incandescence

“Rakesh said, ‘What do the Aloof think we can do with this, that they can’t do themselves?’ ‘Give a damn?’ Parantham suggested.”
― Greg Egan, Incandescence

“Twelve thousand years after walking the plank, Rakesh woke on the floor of his tent. He was lying face-down on a blue and gold sleeping mat; he drew in a deep breath to savour the rich scent of its fibres. This was the tent he’d carried with him on all his travels on Shab-e-Noor, and it remained with him wherever he went.”
― Greg Egan, Incandescence