Vernor Vinge
Computer scientist and science fiction author, as well as a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics.
The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.
Over the last few weeks, some newsgroups have been full of tales of war and battle fleets, of billions dying in the clash of species. To all such—and those living more peaceably around them—we say look out on the universe. It does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.
He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind—but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.
He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.
Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.
“I have come to kill you.”
The death’s heads shrugged. “You have come to try.”
All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.
Hexapodia as the key insight...
I haven’t had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?
"Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots."