Joe Haldeman
American science fiction author.
She hadn’t been such a bad girl before the power went to her head.
“Some are born crazy,” Amelia said. “Some achieve craziness. We had craziness thrust upon us.”
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.
Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction.
Maybe after the war we’ll be civilized again. That’s the way it has always happened in the past.
I never found anyone else and I don’t want anyone 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.
She smiled. “I wouldn’t mind. Is that a difference between men and women or between you and me?”
“I think it’s a difference between you and merely sane people.”
"Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to 'Write What You Know', which explains why so many mediocre novels are about English professors contemplating adultery."
In a physical way we’re closer than any civilian pair could be, since in full combat jack we are this one creature with twenty arms and legs, with ten brains, with five vaginas and five penises.
Some people call the feeling godlike, and I think there have been gods who were constructed along similar lines. The one I grew up with was an old white-bearded Caucasian gent without even one vagina.
It was making me a little queasy. 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.
It was an ideological war for some—the defenders of democracy versus the rebel strong-arm charismatic leaders. Or the capitalist land-grabbers versus the protectors of the people, take your pick.
It was so much more complicated than it had to be, but the changeling had noted that this was true of every human biological function that wasn’t involuntary.
“Everybody rich and happy.” She smiled. “Also complacent and rather stupid, you may have noticed.”
One thing most of us agree on is that the universe exists (people who deny that usually follow some trade other than science), so if some theoretical particle interaction would lead ultimately to the nonexistence of the universe, then you can save a lot of electricity by not trying to demonstrate it.
I had to stifle an impulse to laugh. Surely “cowardice“ had nothing to do with his decision. Surely he had nothing so primitive and unmilitary as a will to live.
If you asked him, he would say the only connection between free will and religion in his life was the fact that he hadn’t set foot in a synagogue since he turned eighteen.
Human nature does change, and the fact that we’ve developed tools to direct that change is quintessentially human. And it must be a nearly universal concomitant to technological growth everywhere in the universe; otherwise there would be no universe. Unless we’re the only technological intelligence in the universe, Julian pointed out; so far there’s no evidence to the contrary. Maybe our own existence is evidence that we’re the first creatures to evolve far enough to hit the reset button. Somebody does have to be first.
But maybe the first is always the last.
“You’re actually a soldier,” he said to me, “and you go along with this foolishness?”
“I didn’t ask to be a soldier. And I can’t imagine a peace as foolish as this war we’re in.”
Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human.
Rationalism doesn’t require “belief,” only observation. The real, measurable world doesn’t care what you believe.