No single individual, however eccentric or brilliant, could affect the enormous inertia of a society that had remained virtually unchanged for over a billion years.
The future is built on the rubbish of the past; wisdom lies in facing that fact, not in fighting against it.
He had no wish to face whatever lurked in the unknown darkness, just beyond the little circle of light cast by the lamp of Science.
Believe me, it gives us no pleasure to destroy men’s faiths, but all the world’s religions cannot be right, and they know it.
And as for you, Paul, I assured him that you could keep a secret for up to six days without apoplexy.
Then I remembered that these men didn’t seem any cleverer than I was; they were highly trained, that was all. If one worked hard enough, one could master anything.
Man sank into a superstitious barbarism during which he distorted history to remove his sense of impotence and failure.
He knew now that when power and ambition and curiosity were satisfied, there still were left the longings of the heart. No one had really lived until they had achieved that synthesis of love and desire which he had never dreamed existed until he came to Lys. He.
The end of strife and conflict of all kinds had also meant the virtual end of creative art. There were myriads of performers, amateur and professional, yet there had been no really outstanding new works of literature, music, painting, or sculpture for a generation. The world was still living on the glories of a past that could never return.
All we want from Thalassa is a hundred thousand tons of water. Or, to be more specific, ice.
The hypothesis you refer to as God, though not disprovable by logic alone, is unnecessary for the following reason. “If you assume that the universe can be quote explained unquote as the creation of an entity known as God, he must obviously be of a higher degree of organization than his product. Thus you have more than doubled the size of the original problem, and have taken the first step on a diverging infinite regress.
When the reality was depressing, men tried to console themselves with myth.
He was still prepared to go on collecting all that life could offer, like a chambered nautilus patiently adding new cells to its slowly expanding spiral.
The billion-year battle against the force of gravity was over.
They were, perhaps, as contented as any race the world had known, and after their fashion they were happy. They spent their long lives amid beauty that had never been surpassed, for the labour of millions of centuries had been dedicated to the glory of Diaspar.
Once is an accident; twice is a coincidence; three times is a conspiracy.
We are survivors. The only survivors. And survivors always feel guilty at being alive.
I Remember Babylon First published in Playboy, March 1960 Collected in Tales of Ten Worlds This is one of the rare cases where I violated Sam Goldwyn’s excellent rule: ‘If you gotta message, use Western Union.’ This story was a message, five years before the first commercial communications satellite was launched, warning of their possible danger. Apart from some minor political earthquakes, everything in it has since come true.
It had to happen to someone. There is nothing exceptional about you, any more than there is about the first neutron that starts the chain reaction in an atomic bomb. It simply happens to be the first. Any other neutron would have served.
The mind has many watchdogs; sometimes they bark unnecessarily, but a wise man never ignores their warning.
If humans could not be rid of religion, it was argued, then let them at least not be harmed by it.