As a dozen pinpoints of fierce light expanded into ripples and shock waves of plasma explosions far out in space. I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis, he said in low, tight ton...
When you think about it, the cause-effect begins to resemble some mad logic-loop by the data artist Carolus or perhaps a print by Escher: the Shrike had come into existence because of the incantatory...
This is all too important. Aenea smiled. It’s all too important. That’s the damned problem, isn’t it? She turned her face back to the stars.
They made love then. Kassad, at twenty-three standard years, had been in love once and had enjoyed sex many times. He thought he knew the way and the why of it. There was nothing in his experience to...
The universe deepened at that moment, the music of the spheres grew from a mere chorus to a symphony as triumphant as Beethoven’s Ninth, and I knew that I would always be able to hear it when I wished...
The silence stretched. Finally Al added one more sentence that I have been thinking about ever since. ‘And if you did it again,’ he said, ‘we would have to kill you again.’ We stared at each other for...
Sometimes Duane imagined that he was the single crewman on a receding starship, already light-years from Earth, unable to turn around, doomed never to return, unable even to reach his destination in a...
Sol, listen, came the Voice, modulated now so it did not boom from far above but almost whispered in his ear, the future of humankind depends upon your choice. Can you offer Rachel out of love, if not...
Sol! Take your daughter, your only daughter Rachel, whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you. And
Sol! Take your daughter, your only daughter Rachel, Whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you. Sol hesit...
Sol remembered the dream, remembered his daughter’s hug, and realized that in the end—when all else is dust—loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith—true faith—was trus...
Sol looked up as a dozen pinpoints of fierce light expanded into ripples and shock waves of plasma explosions far out in space. I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis, he said in...
Religion and ethics were not always—or even frequently—mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often reflected the worst aspects of contempor...
My dear child, beamed Martin Silenus, I am not trying to tell you anything. I just thought it might be entertaining—as well as edifying and enlightening—if at some point we exchanged lists of all the...
Jehovah had not simply been testing Abraham, but had communicated in the only language of loyalty, obedience, sacrifice, and command that humankind could understand at that point in the relationship.
It seemed that Abraham had offered to murder his son to test a phantom. It seemed that Sol had brought his dying daughter through hundreds of light-years and innumerable hardships in response to nothi...
It isn’t hard being a hack writer. Between Dying Earth II and Dying Earth IX, six standard years had passed relatively painlessly. My research was meager, my plots formulaic, my characters cardboard,...
I was getting used to the caustic voice in my head. It and I had made a peace when I realized that it wasn’t urging me to lie down and die, just critiquing my inadequate efforts to stay alive.
I hope that on the morning of my forty-ninth birthday, in Hemingway’s last moments, he might have been thinking, if his sorrow and depression allowed him such a luxury as coherent thought, not only of...
ENOUGH! bellows Zeus and not only stops Ares diatribe , but freezes every god and robot in place. I'll hear no more whining prattle from you, Ares, you lying, two-faced, treacherous sparrowfart, you m...