Home > Work > 2010: Odyssey Two
1 " After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring. "
― Arthur C. Clarke , 2010: Odyssey Two
2 " Humor was the enemy of desire. "
3 " Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else. "
4 " What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities. "
5 " It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything. "
6 " Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity. "
7 " All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe. "
8 " Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect. "
9 " And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed. "
10 " Floyd could imagine a dozen things that could go wrong; it was little consolation that it was always the thirteenth that actually happened. "
11 " Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson. "
12 " They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed. "
13 " But it had been widely argued that advanced intelligence could never arise in the sea; there were not enough challenges in so benign and unvarying an environment. "
14 " He left the unspoken question hanging in the air. How did one annoy a two- kilometre-long black rectangular slab? And just what form would its disapproval take "
15 " A major part of his job was deciding when warnings could be ignored, when they could be dealt with at leisure—and when they had to be treated as real emergencies. If he paid equal attention to all the ship’s cries for help, he would never get anything done. He "
16 " This hydrogen was under such enormous pressure that it had become a metal. "
17 " The core of Jupiter, forever beyond human reach, was a diamond as big as the Earth. "
18 " They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of absolute omnipotence; "
19 " In a rare flash of humor, she had replied: “Woody, a commander can be wrong, but never uncertain. "
20 " Floyd made it a rule never to worry about events over which he could have absolutely no control; any external threat would reveal itself in due time and must be dealt with then. But he could not help wondering if they had done "