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34aa6b4
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The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate. Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?
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Joe Haldeman |
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ff5bad8
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Reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.
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Joe Haldeman |
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707b431
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Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.
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Joe Haldeman |
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ecff904
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Doctors don't seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop.
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human-body
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Joe Haldeman |
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4a226d5
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Science fiction as a genre has the benefit of being able to act as parable, to set up a story at a remove so you can make a real-world point without people throwing up a wall in front of it.
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Joe Haldeman |
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1666daa
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Heaven was a lovely, unspoiled Earth-like world; what Earth might have been like if men had treated her with compassion instead of lust.
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Joe Haldeman |
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e444f0b
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So here we were, fifty men and fifty women, with IQs over 150 and bodies of unusual health and strength, slogging elitely through the mud and slush of central Missouri, reflecting on the usefulness of our skill in building bridges on worlds where the only fluid is an occasional standing pool of liquid helium.
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Joe Haldeman |
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6cc84b3
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But love, he said, love was a fragile blossom; love was a delicate crystal; love was an unstable reaction with a half-life of about eight months. Bullshit, I said, and accused him of wearing cultural blinders; thirty centuries of prewar society taught that love was one thing that could last to the grave and even beyond and if he had been born instead of hatched he would know that without being told!
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Joe Haldeman |
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1e1d8dd
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One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and materiel. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic mane..
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Joe Haldeman |
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ec9d8de
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He's asleep in the harbor, disguised as dog shit.
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snark
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Joe Haldeman |
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7fd9413
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I'm not quite Machiavellian enough to set him up, but if he strays too close to the edge I might give him a nudge.
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Joe Haldeman |
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570c919
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I called to the waiter, 'bring me one of those Antares things.' Sitting here in a bar with an asexual cyborg who is probably the only other normal person on the whole goddamned planet.
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Joe Haldeman |
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1bfb430
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People had written about that, warfare based on attrition of wealth rather than loss of life. But it's always been easier to make new lives than new wealth.
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war
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Joe Haldeman |
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9fe814b
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Saul's vitals were not human, but familiar:
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sestina
spoiler
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Joe Haldeman |
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0abc31f
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I tried to get through to my brother, Mike, on the Moon, but the phone company wouldn't let me place the call until I had signed a contract and posted a $25,000 bond.
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Joe Haldeman |
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9ced241
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Politicians cover their mistakes with money; cooks cover their mistakes with mayonnaise; doctors cover theirs with dirt.
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Joe Haldeman |
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4273e36
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Anyone who sees clearly sees chaos everywhere. Art is a way of temporarily setting order to confusion. Temporary and incomplete; that's why we never run out of new art. Anyone who comes to the tools of art without that sense of confusion is an invader.
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Joe Haldeman |
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7fa974e
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In the few moments I lay awake after finally lying down, the thought came to me that the next time I closed my eyes could well be the last. And partly because of the drug hangover, mostly because of the past day's horrors, I found that I really didn't give a shit.
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Joe Haldeman |
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412c881
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I was too old-fashioned male-chauv to allow that; we discussed for a minute and I wound up with the couch
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feminism
old-fashioned
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Joe Haldeman |
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96f01ee
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Most of us didn't feel too enthusiastic about making a collapsar jump, either. We'd been assured that we wouldn't even feel it happen, just free fall all the way. I wasn't convinced. As a physics student, I'd had the usual courses in general relativity and theories of gravitation. We only had a little direct data at that time -- Stargate was discovered when I was in grade school -- but the mathematical model seemed clear enough. The collaps..
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Joe Haldeman |
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37cdb86
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But they weren't aliens, I had to remind myself -- we were.
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Joe Haldeman |
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17cecad
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heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure.
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Joe Haldeman |
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8c3099c
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It was the cat, who had the usual talent for hiding from people who like cats and cleaving unto those who have sinus trouble or just don't like sneaky little animals.
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Joe Haldeman |
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fbe41ea
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I die. O my hair falls out and my flesh rots and my bones are cracked by the hungry ta!a'an. He drops me behind him all around the forest and nothing will grow where his excrement from my marrow falls. As the years pass the forest dies from the poison of my remains. The soil washes into the sean and poisons the fish and all die. O the embarrassment.
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Joe Haldeman |
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cea6ada
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I die. I breathe in and breahe in and cannot exhale. I explode all over my friends. They forget my name and pretend it is dung. They wash off in the square and the well becomes polluted. All die. O the embarrassment.
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Joe Haldeman |
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cadf5dc
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This is embarrassing. I uh, die and, um the last breath from my lungs is a terrible acid. It melts the seaward wall of the city and a hurricane comes and washes it away. All die. O the embarrassment -You're much better at that than he was.
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Joe Haldeman |
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b4d9ca4
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I die. I,uh, have a terrible fever in my head and it gets hotter and hotter and hotter until my head is a fire, a forge, a star. I set the world on fire and everybody dies. O the embarrassment.
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Joe Haldeman |
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f8a089d
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I die. My footprints are cursed. I walk around the village not knowing that all who cross where I have been will stay in estrous zero and bear no young. Eventually all die. O the embarrassment.
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Joe Haldeman |
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0c0406c
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I die. Before I die my body turns hair-side-in. People come from everywhere to see the insides of themselves. But the sight makes them lose the will, and all die. O the embarrassment.
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Joe Haldeman |
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01ece44
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About a month later, we left for our final training exercise, maneuvers on the planet Charon. Though nearing perihelion, it was still more than twice as far from the sun as Pluto. The troopship was a converted "cattlewagon" made to carry two hundred colonists and assorted bushes and beasts. Don't think it was roomy, though, just because there were half that many of us. Most of the excess space was taken up with extra reaction mass and ordna..
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Joe Haldeman |
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af9b782
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I never found anybody else and I don't want anybody else. I don't care whether you're ninety years old or thirty. If I can't be your lover, I'll be your nurse.
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Joe Haldeman |
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0b8819e
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Don't worry about that, Man, just make out my ticket.
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major-william-mandella
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Joe Haldeman |
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ffed0a5
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Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled; Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your glory bed, Or to victory.
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Joe Haldeman |
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5fa2ad2
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My back pay came to $892,746,012. Not in the form of bales of currency, fortunately; on Heaven they used an electronic credit exchange, so I carried my fortune around in a little machine with a digital readout. To buy something you punched in the vendor's credit number and the amount of purchase; the sum was automatically shuffled from your account to his. The machine was the size of a slender wallet and coded to your thumbprint.
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Joe Haldeman |
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4964d42
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War is the province of danger and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior, von Clausewitz maintained.
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Joe Haldeman |
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66b130a
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We're headed for Aleph-7. Panty raid." New slang term for the type of operation whose main object was to gather Tauran artifacts, and prisoners if possible. I tried to find out where the term came from, but the one explanation I got was really idiotic."
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Joe Haldeman |
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5caabc4
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Most of human history had been industry versus nature, with industry winning.
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industrialization
development
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Joe Haldeman |
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be037f9
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the Aleph-Null campaign.
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Joe Haldeman |
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7c4087e
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I've always thought the pre-Revolutionary system was more elegant, but it did concentrate too much power in the hands of one person. Keyes says that at least you knew who the man was then. The person who represents a Lobby in Congress is never the one who makes the real decisions; the real leaders are rarely identifiable and are never held responsible for their actions. If a puppet gets in trouble they sacrifice him and haul out another. I ..
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Joe Haldeman |
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1488f71
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This world was no place for anyone with access to another.
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Joe Haldeman |
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aac04b5
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Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there...the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.
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Joe Haldeman |
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e139041
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You couldn't blame it all on the military, though. The evidence they presented for the Taurans' having been responsible for the earlier casualties was laughably thin. The few people who pointed this out were ignored. The fact was, Earth's economy needed a war, and this one was ideal. It gave a nice hole to throw buckets of money into, but would unify humanity rather than dividing it. The
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Joe Haldeman |
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c75ed13
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But I remember another image from Earth: the rich dark green grass that grew in graveyards.
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Joe Haldeman |
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a9c65e1
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That meant that he'd drunk too much too early, and had popped an Alcoterm to burn it off.
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Joe Haldeman |