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21 " Turns out that capitalism is unkillable because it kills every other system first. "
― Paul McAuley , Austral
22 " The concept of hero is very interesting to us,’ Unlikely Worlds said. ‘We are composites. No one component is worth more than any other. Your minds are in some ways similar. Your so-called “self” is a composite superimposed on the activity of many competing subpersonalities or agents. What you perceive as your consciousness is a string of temporary heroes rising above those they have defeated. And so you seek out heroes "
― Paul McAuley , Something Coming Through
23 " to escape the deepening grip of multinational corporations and the Coca-colonisation of the weird. Out here, you could still have your mind eaten by an alien phantom, stumble upon a lost city, or discover a fraying thread of some kind of weird quantumised metamaterial that could kick-start a new industrial revolution and make you a billionaire. Out here were places not yet mapped. Old dreams and deep mysteries. A world wild and strange and still mostly unknown. "
24 " Listen: I’m not going to tell you what to do. We cannot make decisions for you. We came to help, but we do not want to interfere. We gave you a gift, yours to do with as you will. But you’ve heard all that before. We’re happy to talk. To answer questions about why we don’t stop war and suffering, cure cancer, end poverty, point the way to heaven or point out that there is no heaven. Ask us anything. We don’t mind. We try our best to be candid, but there is an inevitable degree of mutual incomprehension. Because your qualia aren’t our qualia. Because we’re running models of who you think you are and what you think you know, but they’re just models. Because the map isn’t the territory. Because we aren’t gods. We aren’t even close. You know? At best, we’re pipers at the gates of dawn. Who have come to this little blue planet to help. "
25 " That’s where we are,” he said. “One star amongst four hundred billion. "
― Paul McAuley ,
26 " Pick up the world and turn it over, as Mama liked to say, and you won’t find fair written anywhere on it. "
27 " Keeping the human race in check must require a lot of multitasking. "
28 " Once upon a time, women were the equals of men. Not only by law, although that was important, and the result of many hard-fought and difficult battles. But also by culture and by custom. Men came to accept that women should have the same rights of self-determination that they enjoyed. But then there was the Overturn, and the great crisis caused by sudden and catastrophic climate change. "
― Paul McAuley , In the Mouth of the Whale (The Quiet War, #3)
29 " How to tell a story? First find a point of view. "
30 " She said, ‘Is that legal?’ ‘I was trained to use bigger guns than this.’ Which didn’t exactly answer her question. "
31 " Your so-called “self” is a composite superimposed on the activity of many competing subpersonalities or agents. What you perceive as your consciousness is a string of temporary heroes rising above those they have defeated. And so you seek out heroes in the common story of your race. "
32 " Absolute scientific truth was like the speed of light, a value which could be approached but never reached. "
33 " Nostalgia for a simplified and deeply nativist version of history, a past that had never existed except in the mythologies of people, mostly male, mostly white, mostly straight, who found the modern world too complicated. "
34 " The things you people can do now!” Unlikely Worlds said. “The stories you make! "
35 " Ugly Chicken says she’s nice,’ the little girl said. Freddie "
36 " Abulanam’s Pride emerged into a sky dominated by the heaven tree of a stellar nursery. Billowing thunderheads and swirling currents of sooty dust, silicate grains and gas aglow with the radiation of hot bright stars embedded in them. Ragged pillars, shaped by light and stellar winds, clawing across a dozen light years, spalling offshoots tipped with the blowsy haloes of stars birthing in collapsing knots of protostellar material. A vast, violent engine of creation. "
37 " There are many stories,” Unlikely Worlds said, “but most follow similar patterns. "
38 " Everything’s a data point. "
39 " A poster by the door to the locker room showed a Jackaroo avatar dressed as Uncle Sam, pointing a white-gloved finger under the caption I Want You for Anal Probing. "
40 " They celebrated in a bar, and after half a dozen cocktails came to the mutual decision that it would be a blast to get married. So Lisa bought a couple of rings in a pawnshop and they did the deed in the hotel chapel, reading their vows in Klingon off an iPhone in front of a guy in golden robes and Spock ears. "