We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they but point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and...
You’ll run out of expletives soon; I’d advise saving some for later. Not that keeping forces in reserve has ever been precisely you guys’ strong point, has it?
Bob-nodded toward the open module door. After you.
Clasp/
Faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence.
Individual is obsolete. That’s why life is so comfortable for us all. We don’t matter, so we’re safe. No one person can have any real effect anymore.
No matter how intelligent, perceptive and gifted you were, no matter how entirely you lived for the ascetic rewards of the intellect and eschewed the material world and the ignobility of the flesh, if...
The Culture had placed its bets—long before the Idiran war had been envisaged—on the machine rather than the human brain. This was because the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational s...
We have found that the underdisciplined child will bump up against life eventually and learn their lessons that way – albeit all the harder for their parents’ earlier lack of courage and concern. The...
A very patient voice. Concerned, somehow, but a hopeful voice; a cheerful, even loving voice. He tried to remember his mother. ‘Cheradenine?’ the voice said again. Trying to get him to wake up. But he...
All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning.
All very melodramatic. Your feud may inspire a not terribly good screen presentation at some point in the future, hopefully distant. I look forward to missing it.
Behind it, still expanding, still radiating, still slowly dissolving in the system to which it had given its name, the unnumbered twinkling fragments of the Orbital called Vavatch blew out toward the...
Besides, it left the humans in the Culture free to take care of the things that really mattered in life, such as sports, games, romance, studying dead languages, barbarian societies and impossible pro...
But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table. And therefore does not really signify on the cosmic scale of events? the man suggested. He smiled in response to the man’s grin, Well, yes. But then,...
But no matter whether we are all in a still greater game, this one here before us is at a cruder grain than that which it models. Entire battles, and sometimes therefore wars, can hinge on a jammed gu...
Can’t machines build these faster? he asked the woman, looking around the starship shell.Why, of course! she laughed.Then why do you do it?It’s fun. You see one of these big mothers sail out those doo...
Contest is formative; battle is a testing, war a part of life and the evolutionary process. In its extremity, we find ourselves.Usually in the shit.
Earth is a silly and boring planet. If not, then it is too deeply unpleasant to be allowed to exist! Dammit, there’s something wrong with those people! They are beyond redemption and hope! They are no...
Good grief, man; the Culture’s been a spacefaring species for eleven thousand years; just because you’ve mostly settled down in idealized, tailor-made conditions doesn’t mean you’ve lost the capacity...
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