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6d11467
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The bureaucrat fell from the sky.
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Michael Swanwick |
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c3138aa
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Art should be beautiful, not ugly. It should be uplifting and redemptive. Art reassures us that life is good and that, however bad things may look at the moment, everything works out for the best in the end.
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Michael Swanwick |
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dbd31da
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So that, logically, in the brief time allotted to us, we should be as kind to one another as is humanly possible and face the harsh facts of reality without fear or flinching.
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Michael Swanwick |
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c0dc68c
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The mechanism thus created periodically acts out post-modern notions of cosmology and then deconstructs itself. It has met with great admiration and no little puzzlement.
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Michael Swanwick |
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3459e19
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My colleague and I are journalists. ... Not of the muckraking variety, I hasten to assure you! Corruption is a necessary and time-honored concomitant of any functioning government, which we support wholeheartedly.
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humor
government-corruption
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Michael Swanwick |
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733ce0a
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A hippogriff flew past, trailing laughter. It came so close to Will that he could smell its scent, a pungent mixture of horse sweat and milky pin-feathers, and feel the wind from its wings. Its rider's hair streamed out behind her like a red banner. Will stared up at her, awestruck. The young woman in the saddle was all grace and athleticism. She wore green slacks with matching soft leather boots and, above a golden swatch of abdomen, a hal..
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Michael Swanwick |
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63faca1
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This book is dedicated to all good teachers everywhere, most particularly those of the William Levering School and Central High School in Philadelphia, to whom more is owed than can ever be repaid.
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philadelphia
teachers
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Michael Swanwick |
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14cb504
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I forget if it was the Mathematician of Alexandria who said that geometry is beauty laid bare or the Father of Relativity who made the claim for physics," Darger said. "She is, in either case, ravishing."
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ravishing
physics
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Michael Swanwick |
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13d9336
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Relationships between things shift and change constantly; there is not such thing as objective truth.
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Michael Swanwick |
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f3be024
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Their business here was over then, and they all knew it; the magic moment had arrived when it was understood that nothing more would be established, discovered, or decided today. But the meeting, having once begun, must drag on for several long more hours before it could be ended. The engines of protocol had enormous inertial mass; once set in motion they took forever to grind to a stop.
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witty
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Michael Swanwick |
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1470bb0
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Everybody needs a servant, excellent sir, whether they know it or not.
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Michael Swanwick |
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06707be
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A few words before we attack," Surplus said. "I know that I can trust you all to be terrifying..." "Yasss!" his mountain horse said. "Be quiet, Buttercup. However, please remember to only knock down things that are not difficult to repair - porches are fine; pottery is not."
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Michael Swanwick |
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79b2c17
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The best thing to be in a city was anonymous. Failing that, however, notoriety would do.
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Michael Swanwick |
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98da895
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The Spider Hero lived his life by this maxim: He who possesses great power is burdened also with great responsibility. --
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Michael Swanwick |
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a0e6c79
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Lucky for you, you don't need to worry about love at all. Because you have a wife.
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Michael Swanwick |
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9142c49
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It almost sounds sensible when you say it," Prince First-Born Splendor said. "Even though I know better." --
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Michael Swanwick |
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deb0931
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Surely you'll agree that the planets order and control our destinies?" "They do not." "Not at all?" "No." "Then what does? Control our destinies, I mean." "The only external forces that have any influence on us are those we can see every day: the smile, the frown, the fist, the brick wall. What you call 'destiny' is merely a semantic fallacy, the attribution of purpose to blind causality. Insofar as any of us are compelled to resist the flo..
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Michael Swanwick |
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7ea32fb
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The body, you know, is ninety percent water, and there are those who will tell you that life is only a device which water employs to move itself about.
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Michael Swanwick |
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17b4c3b
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and he was young and joyful and in love and his sweetie was here with him, and she loved him, too. All the world was theirs and bright with possibility. So it couldn't last. Who the fuck cared?
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Michael Swanwick |
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4dcd037
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Silent, unseen, small cousin of death, Born this instant, closer than breath, Killer of thought, assassin of dreams, Memory's surgeon, the end of your schemes.
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Michael Swanwick |
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0eeebe3
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delegation of hobs came out of the deep woods and, in a ceremony that dated back to the founding of the House, presented her with five blue jay feathers and a single perfect acorn. She repaid them with silver, bolts of jacquard silk, and as many of the best and largest flat screen television sets commercially available as they could carry back to their burrows in a day.
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Michael Swanwick |
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a147b44
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Per molto tempo il Baldwynn non parlo. -- Servirai la Dea, ora? -- disse infine. -- Consapevolmente e affettuosamente, in dolce obbedienza e umile riconoscimento di tutto cio che lei e?
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Michael Swanwick |
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5b319e6
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Doveva trovarsi sopra gli scavi archeologici, penso. Un ottavo di miglio quadrato che era stato ancorato nella roccia sottostante con degli stabilizzatori dopo aver sepolto nel suo cuore almeno tre segnalatori di navigazione sigillati per impedire che la terra, in una nuova epoca, nascondesse di nuovo il tutto.
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Michael Swanwick |
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89d7af0
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From boyhood, all his passion had been for knowledge. He had ached to hold within him the compass of all lore and learning, to read the book of Nature and so comprehend the mind of its Creator, to be that more-than-mortal man, that Magister Mirabilis who would synthesize and reveal all, and so raise Mankind from the muck of superstition, disease, and ignorance, easing human misery and undoing the curse of toil, filling the nations with clea..
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Michael Swanwick |
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4273f1a
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There is a logic to the shapes of lives and relationships, and that logic is embedded in the stuff of existence. The lover does not awake one morning convinced he would rather be an engineer. The musician does not abandon her keyboard without regrets. The CEO does not surrender wealth. Or if he does, he will find it easier to give up everything, find a cave in the mountains and become a philosopher than to simply downscale his life-style. Y..
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Michael Swanwick |