Virtual Unrealities Quotes

“One of the things that everybody knows about space travel but never mentions is its aphrodisiac quality.”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“He was afflicted with an education and a sense of humor. He was inspired by a purpose. He was armed with a phone book. He was doomed.”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“Dazzlement and enchantment are Bester’s methods. His stories never stand still a moment; they’re forever tilting into motion, veering, doubling back, firing off rockets to distract you. The repetition of the key phrase in “Fondly Fahrenheit,” the endless reappearances of Mr. Aquila in “The Star-comber” are offered mockingly: try to grab at them for stability, and you find they mean something new each time. Bester’s science is all wrong, his characters are not characters but funny hats; but you never notice: he fires off a smoke-bomb, climbs a ladder, leaps from a trapeze, plays three bars of “God Save the King,” swallows a sword and dives into three inches of water. Good heavens, what more do you want?”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“Mr. Jukes’s work involves the creation of the spiritual slogans that uplift the consumer half of the nation. A few of these have come down to us in more or less fragmentary condition, and those of you who have taken Professor Rex Harrison’s course, Linguistics 916, know the extraordinary difficulties we are encountering in our attempts to interpret: ‘Good to the Last Drop’ (for ‘good’ read ‘God’?); ‘Does She or Doesn’t She?’ (what?); and ‘I Dreamed I Went to the Circus in My Maidenform Bra’ (incomprehensible).”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“Through the vistas of the years every age but our own seems glamorous and golden. We yearn for the yesterdays and tomorrows, never realizing that we are faced with Hobson’s Choice … that today, bitter or sweet, anxious or calm, is the only day for us. The dream of time is the traitor, and we are all accomplices to the betrayal of ourselves.”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“The difference between a Welfare State and a Benevolent Despot is slight.”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“I share this house with two and a half men and a mountain gorilla. We have everything in stock.”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“Mayo was again awakened by the clatter of dispossessed ducks.”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

“There are fighting generals (vital to an army), political generals (vital to an administration), and public relations generals (vital to a war).”
― Alfred Bester, Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester