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71f9216
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We were on our own; and so we became fundamentally different beings.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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2fcd5bf
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Despair could never touch a morning like this. The air was cool, and smelled of sage. It had the clarity that comes to Southern California only after a Santa Ana wind has blown all haze and history out to sea -- air like telescopic glass, so that the snowcapped San Gabriela seemed near enough to touch, though they were forty miles away. The flanks of the blue foothills revealed the etching of every ravine, and beneath the foothills, stretch..
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hook
ever
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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b193082
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There are ecological, biological, sociological, and psychological problems that can never be solved to make this idea work. The physical problems of propulsion have capture your fancy, and perhaps they can be solved, but they are the easy ones.
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science
science-fiction
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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6ecb9f8
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Statistically it was not greatly different than it had been for previous generations, but anecdotally it had become so prominent that every problem was noticed and remarked. The cognitive error called ease of representation thrust them into a space where every problem they witnessed convinced them they were in an unprecedented colapse. They were getting depressed.
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science
science-fiction
society
pessimism
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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1fc9db2
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What can I say, friends?" he cried. "This is the thing itself, there are no words for this. This is what words ask for."
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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e24a95d
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Take this moment right here, and ask yourself, What is now lacking?
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philosophy
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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5a1d174
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Marriage," Swan repeated, marveling at the word. To her it was a concept from the Middle Ages, from old Earth--an idea with a strong whiff of patriarchy and property. Not meant for space, not meant for longevity. One moved through one's life in epochs, each a stage in one's history, lasting some few or several years, and then circumstances changed and you were in a new life, with new associates. That could not be altered, not if you were ou..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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127a91d
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No happiness but in virtue. No, that wasn't true. Each part of the triune brain has its own happiness. Lizard in the sun, mammal on the hunt, human doing something good. What's good is good for the land. So when you worked as if on the hunt, in light and warmth, at making a landscape--some place for people to live in for ages to come--then you were triunely happy. Surely that should be enough. But then you wanted to share it. Just so there ..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a6b51f4
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We'll all go on and make the place safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it's all some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone and we'll be here, and we'll wonder why we feel so empty. Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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20a2971
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Henry Ford was afraid that the amount of dirt that was being removed to make room for the foundation of the Empire State Building was so great that it would have a disastrous effect on the rotation of the Earth. Not a genius.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4d0f088
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Everyone was equal there. Men, women, children, and people you couldn't say what they were. All the various skin tones, and wherever you came from before, it didn't matter. In this new place you made it all new, and people were just people, meant to be equal, and to treat each other respectfully at all times. It
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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10e7783
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The Aztecs had believed the world would end in one of four ways: earthquake, fire, flood, or jaguars falling from the sky. Here there would be no fire. Nor earthquake nor flood, now that he thought of it. Leaving only the jaguars.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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80adb0f
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And yet here they were. He looked at Aurora's assistants, hovering over the bank of machines against the wall. He hoped the treatment would work, that it would not kill or derange him. They slipped their preparation into his blood using a hollow needle that they inserted painlessly into his skin--an ugly little experience. He held his breath as they did this, and when he finally exhaled and inhaled, the world ballooned. He saw immediately t..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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77e0163
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If our government tries to back the banks instead of us, then we elect a different government. We pretend that democracy is real, and that will make it real.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a31bfe0
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I prefer to call it fiscal decapitation.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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270c6e3
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No, we're the two old Muppets on the balcony, cracking lame jokes.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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c29e69e
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the passenger compartment of this one goes right to the moon. The booster stage will come back down after your launch and land right over there." She pointed across the concrete" --
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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9d62066
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Strange how one remembered faces until you tried to look at them in your mind, when they turned away from you.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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35590e1
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Best to strip all statements of real content, this was a basic law of diplomacy.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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01e4ac6
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The way got harder. One day they made only a kilometer.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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b0a7fda
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This noisy black creature would be the start of it all: a horse startled, his eye round, scraped white around it, a white tear streak under the eye, also scraped. Mouth open as it whinnied in protest at being seen, then reared and wheeled away, as it had done on the ridge, in that moment when some part of Loon had been born, his wander's great moment, when he had realized the world was stuffed with a meaning he couldn't express. Right here ..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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885b54a
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Well-established law, going back to Roman law, to the Justinian Code in fact, turned out to be weirdly clear on the status of the intertidal. It's crazy to read, like Roman futurology: The things which are naturally everybody's are: air, flowing water, the sea, and the sea-shore. So nobody can be stopped from going on to the sea-shore. The sea-shore extends as far as the highest winter tide. The law of all peoples gives the public a right t..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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ff4b8a6
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Someone should enjoy it," Ann said. When she was angry or bitter her voice became flat and distant, almost as if she were being matter-of-fact. "It won't be here long."
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4e79273
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I see the hills look odd too. Not tectonic action, nor rain, nor riverbeds, nor glaciers, nor wind shaped these hills. They are uncanny. You can see something is different here, and it's hard not to feel it's wrong.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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accdd81
|
They [women] looked at you-they looked at everything-with a most piercing glance. They were the most curious animals of all, even more than their sisters fox and cat.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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8830e38
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With practice one could dodge the past almost entirely.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4479e6d
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The Amex man had even lifted his wrist to his mouth to take down a note, in a gesture obviously meant to be seen:
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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dbdca33
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When I'm with you I feel faintly anxious, judged, inadequate. Not the kind of person you like, which I find offensive, and thus behave more like that part of me than ever. Though I want your good opinion too, but that desire I find irritating, and so contradicted in myself. Why should I care? You don't care. And yet you do care. "I love you," you said. And she wanted him to feel that way when he was with her."
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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49d9373
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Then comes September and the sun tilts to the south. Yes, autumn in New York: the great song of the city and the great season. Not just for the relief from the brutal extremes of winter or summer, but for that glorious slant of the light, that feeling that in certain moments lances in on that tilt--that you had been thinking you were living in a room and suddenly with a view between buildings out to the rivers, a dappled sky overhead, you a..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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16a7454
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It was hard for her not to feel that a person loving her was making a big mistake, because she knew herself better than they did, so knew their love was given in error, and thus they must be some kind of fool. And yet it was precisely that misplaced love she wanted; someone who would like you more than you do; someone who likes you despite yourself; someone more generous to you than you are.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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bb89db9
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Red Mars! It was transfixing, mesmerizing. Everyone felt it.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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fb37938
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One sequence of these diary notes had lasted longer than most, and by their content he saw that they came from the time right after his father had died. One line stuck him like a thorn: Alone in the house. Must get used to it. He stared at her crabbed handwriting. He saw how it must have been, and sat down in the nearest chair. A spasm of sorrow passed through him, followed after a while by a wash of relief, as he realized that his mom was ..
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grief
family
diary
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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27fe7fa
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Squatters. The dispossessed. The water rats. Denizens of the deep, citizens of the shallows. And a lot of them were interested in trying something different, including which authorities they gave their consent to be governed by. Hegemony had drowned, so in the years after the flooding there was a proliferation of cooperatives, neighborhood associations, communes, squats, barter, alternative currencies, gift economies, solar usufruct, fishin..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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e8fb7c1
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We should do this more often," Charlotte lied. "For sure," Larry lied back."
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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bf93867
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Late in this quiet meal Ann looked around curiously at her companions, suddenly awed by the spectacle of human adaptability. Here they were eating their dinner, talking over the low boom from the north, in a perfect illusion of dining-room conviviality; it might have been anywhere anytime, and their tired faces bright with some collective success, or merely with the pleasure of eating together--while just outside their chamber the broken wo..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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e9bcef5
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Reality is not a matter of our senses. It can't be visualized.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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cedfb33
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Depressed people did not usually engage in criminal conspiracies
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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e919275
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This perpetual rise and fall now got measured to an obsessive-compulsive degree, understandable given the traumas of the last century and the distinct possibility of future traumas. Sea level had for the most part stabilized after the Second Pulse, but there was still a lot of Antarctic ice teetering on the brink, so past performance was no guarantee of future anything.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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872c202
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Of course I will like forever any woman who has gone to bed with me, as long as we don't become a couple and hate each other forever.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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458cf28
|
It's stupid because it makes the assumption that your enemies are weaker than you, and will do what you want if you murder a few of them. But people aren't like that. I mean, think about how it will fall out. You go down that canyon and kill a bunch of people doing their jobs, and later other people come along and find the bodies. They'll hate you forever. Even if you do take over Mars someday they'll still hate you, and do anything they ca..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4b19981
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Analogies always deceive more than they reveal; I am no fan of analogies, I do not use them. Even metaphor, that mental operation we use with almost every word we speak, is slippery and deceptive. I always speak as plainly as I can. And yet language, and therefore thought, is a strange and imprecise game of metaphors and analogies, one that we must play to stay alive.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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1af6e0d
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What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one's options, and reduce one's freedom. One became a servant of one's wealth or power, constrained to spend all one's time protecting it.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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8684f91
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Hierarchy, you know. And their place in the hierarchy. As long as it's high enough. Everyone bound into their places. It's safer than freedom. And a lot of people are cowards.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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64c0127
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the way bubbles work is structurally identical to Ponzi schemes--what a coincidence!--and indeed it's another amazing coincidence how much the entire capitalist economy resembles in its basic structure either a Ponzi scheme or a bundle of Ponzi schemes.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |