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426fff6
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Minkowski spacetime.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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cb6ce4e
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It seemed to him that his ship was rather like a stranded whale that had managed a difficult birth in an alien element. He hoped that the new calf would survive.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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4cc6aad
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There's nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges--absorbing but never creating. Di..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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5e8b058
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One day, somebody had predicted, Earth would have a ring like Saturn's, composed entirely of lost bolts, fasteners, and even tools that had escaped from careless orbital construction workers.)
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d4a6e1e
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Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges--absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won'..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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6c9140b
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had often been said that the only thing that could unite Mankind was a threat from space.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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aa03656
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Is there intelligent life on Earth? Yours,
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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524f0bb
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She was certain that it was wise to prevent Wilson and Brown from working closely together during sorties inside Rama. Nicole chastised herself for not having raised the issue with Borzov on her own. She realized that her mission portfolio included mental health as well, but somehow she had difficulty thinking of herself as the crew psychiatrist. I avoid it because it's not an objective process, she thought. We have no sensors yet to measur..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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0c394ab
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As a matter of interest," he said,"
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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f0408db
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Yet there was also something slightly spooky about them. Norton could never understand how men with advanced scientific and technical training could possibly believe some of the things he had heard Cosmo Christers state as incontrovertible fact.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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84fad86
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Hal's internal fault predictor could have made a mistake." "It's more"
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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b511ef4
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Nothing in this scene will be changed by my death, Nicole thought. There will just be one less pair of eyes to observe its splendor. And one less collection of chemicals risen to consciousness to wonder what it all means.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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b56e0e8
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harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more evil than good.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d19d494
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Even a doomed man might reasonably be expected to take some slight interest in a few thousand square meters of gems. He
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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c68f2b1
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The eruption had hurled the thing out of its normal environment, deep down in the flaming atmosphere of the sun. It was a miracle that it had survived its journey through space; already it must be dying, as the forces that controlled its huge, invisible body lost their hold over the electrified gas which was the only substance it possessed.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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1d4b66e
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Because Nature always balances her books, the Sun lost some velocity in the transaction; but the effect would not be measurable for a few thousand years.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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48783e2
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The sign of its passing was written there upon the sky as if a giant hand had drawn a piece of chalk across the blue dome of heaven. Even as they watched, the gleaming vapor trail began to fray at the edges, breaking up into wisps of cloud, until it seemed that a bridge of snow had been thrown from horizon to horizon.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d5534fd
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Although Lucifer had accelerated the process, it has begun decades earlier, when the coming of the jet age had triggered and explosion of global tourism
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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35f3a79
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How foolish that expectation had been! He knew now that one might as well hope to see the wind, or speculate about the true shape of fire.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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1d479c4
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Yet if there were no hazards there would be no achievement, no sense of adventure.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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ae83d97
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The Chairman glared across three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers of space at Conrad Taylor, who reluctantly subsided, like a volcano biding its time.
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humor
science
science-fiction
scifi
space
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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e3acaf7
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Manual control, please." "Are you sure, Frank?" "Quite sure, 'Falcon' ... Thank you." Illogical though it seemed, most of the human race had found it impossible not to be polite to its artificial children, however simpleminded they might be. Whole volumes of psychology, as well as popular guides ('How Not to Hurt Your Computer's Feelings'; 'Artificial Intelligence -- Real Irritation' were some of the best-known titles) had been written on t..
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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c36ced0
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a man's beliefs were his own affair, so long as they did not interfere with the liberty of others.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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2830413
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The room you are about to enter," the Eagle said, setting up Nicole's wheelchair, "is the largest single room in this domain. It is half a kilometer across at its widest point. Inside currently is a model of the Milky Way Galaxy."
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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da7f139
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Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other.
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out-of-context
science-fiction
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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4df542d
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The extraordinary meeting of the Space Advisory Council was brief and stormy. Even by the twenty-second century, no way had yet been discovered of keeping elderly and conservative scientists from occupying crucial administrative positions. Indeed, it was doubted if the problem ever would be solved.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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be92abe
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This was the fundamental problem with rockets--and no one had ever discovered any alternative for deep-space propulsion. It was just as difficult to lose speed as to acquire it, and carrying the necessary propellant for deceleration did not merely double the difficulty of a mission; it squared it.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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00ec668
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Astronomy was full of such intriguing but meaningless coincidences. The most famous was the fact that, from the Earth, both Sun and Moon have the same apparent diameter.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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999ecfe
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The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas, 1968, became the first men ever to set eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d626185
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It was such a nuisance that men were fundamentally polygamous. On the other hand, if they weren't... Yes, perhaps it was better this way, after all.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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7024054
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I said nothing about men adapting themselves to Mars. Have you ever considered the possibility of Mars meeting us half-way?
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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8b9c3ea
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Bose was slightly less happy about the presence of Conrad Taylor, the celebrated anthropologist, who had made his reputation by uniquely combining scholarship and eroticism in his study of puberty rites in late-twentieth-century Beverly Hills.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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c10302f
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Martin's one of the nicest fellows you could meet, as long as you don't do it too often.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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f65c66b
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His mind wandered, seeking other examples. People--particularly older ones--still spoke of putting film into a camera, or gas into a car. Even the phrase "cutting a tape" was still sometimes heard in recording studios--though that embraced two generations of obsolete technologies."
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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0a2eff9
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There was no evidence that the intelligence of the human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest opportunity of using what brain he had.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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4f08c13
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I've just had an amusing flashback. All these creatures going in the same direction--they look like the commuters who used to surge back and forth twice a day between home and office, before electronics made it unnecessary.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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f2eea32
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Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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828df8a
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And just fifty years had separated the Wright Brothers from the first jet airliners.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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0c61412
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Behind Alystra was the known world, full of wonder yet empty of surprise, drifting like a brilliant but tightly closed bubble down the river of time. Ahead, separated from her by no more than the span of a few footsteps, was the empty wilderness--the world of the desert--the world of the Invaders.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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e1d264d
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That first Prime Monitor," he said, "was sent by the Creator, from another dimension of the early universe, into our evolving space-time system."
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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7896ccd
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In Brohier's eyes, violence was not merely the last refuge of the incompetent. It was the gloating revenge of the sore loser.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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d87d598
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This would involve disconnection--the computer equivalent of death. Despite
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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cad3eb5
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the very atoms of his simple brain were being twisted into new patterns. If he survived, those patterns would become eternal, for his genes would pass them on to future generations. It was a slow, tedious business, but the crystal monolith was patient. Neither it, nor its replicas scattered across half the globe, expected to succeed with all the scores of groups involved in the experiment.
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Arthur C. Clarke |
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97fc198
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Hal in full control of the ship. The
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Arthur C. Clarke |