He did not wander aimlessly, though he never knew which village would be his next port of call. He was seeking no particular place, but a mood, an influence – indeed, a way of life.
So the problem of Evil never really existed. To expect the universe to be benevolent was like imagining one could always win at a game of pure chance.
Even the few serious crimes that did occur received no particular attention in the news. For well-bred people do not, after all, care to read about the social gaffes of others.
A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.
Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting.
He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles. And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.
An author should never turn down the opportunity for a new experience.
Instantly, there had been cries of protest from the industrial archaeologists, outraged at such vandalism, and from the naturalists, who pointed out that the penguins simply loved the abandoned pipeline.
The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well stocked mind is safe from boredom.
In Lys, it seemed, all love began with mental contact, and it might be months or years before a couple actually met. In this way, Hilvar explained, there could be no false impressions, no deceptions, on either side. Two people whose minds were open to one another could hide no secrets.
Men had sought beauty in many forms – in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered, or if it had any meaning outside the mind of Man. And the same was true of love.
Meteorites don’t fall on the Earth. They fall on the Sun and the Earth gets in the way.” – John W. Campbell.
There’s an ancient philosophical joke that’s much subtler than it seems. Question: Why is the Universe here? Answer: Where else would it be?
Children grow fast in this low gravity. But they don’t age so quickly – they’ll live longer than we do.” Floyd stared in fascination at the self-assured little lady, noting the graceful carriage and the unusually delicate bone structure.
Tom hated to admit defeat, even in matters far less important than this. He believed that all problems could be solved if they were tackled in the right way, with the right equipment. This was a challenge to his scientific ingenuity; the fact that there were many lives involved was immaterial. Dr. Tom Lawson had no great use for human beings, but he did respect the Universe. This was a private fight between him and It.
Moon-Watcher and his companions had no recollection of what they had seen, after the crystal had ceased to cast its hypnotic spell over their minds and to experiment with their bodies. The next day, as they went out to forage, they passed it with scarcely a second thought; it was now part of the disregarded background of their lives. They could not eat it, and it could not eat them; therefore it was not important.
No electronic computer can match the human brain at associating apparently irrelevant facts.
Myron, like countless NCO’s before him, had discovered the ideal compromise between power and responsibility.
It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.
Absence of noise is not a natural condition; all human senses require some input. If they are deprived of it, the mind manufactures its own substitutes.