After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal pri...
Head. The Core has devised a parasitic, organic device called the cruciform, she said. It … brings back … the dead. After a few generations, the humans will be retarded, listless, and without a future...
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...
You stay with her. I’ll follow it in.
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...
There has to be more than this, I said. The doctor looked up from his grim work with a bemused smile. Is there? he said. Please show me. He lifted the man’s heart and seemed to weigh it in one hand.
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 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...
Rage.Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus’ son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to t...
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...
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...
Do you think it's ready? I [Silenus, The Poet] asked. It's perfect... a masterpiece.Do you think it'll sell? I asked. No fucking way.
But love...of whom? I say at last. Of what? What great passion would forestall death?Her graceful eyebrow arches, You do not know? You, a poet?I do not know. I say as much.She leans forward so that I...