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Eight-year-olds can switch into acquisition mode pretty quickly.
John Scalzi
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Teenagers can be idiotic and stupid, but teenagers also model their behavior from the signals they get from adults.
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If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it's best to meet it with an empty bladder.
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The Scooby gang doesn't travel because they are looking for crimes to solve. They travel because they're one step ahead of the deprogrammers. Somehow, Fred's got them all snookered. It probably has something to do with the Scooby Snacks.
John Scalzi
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You do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesn't cost you much to do it. I'd rather apologize for something I didn't really care about and leave someone on Earth wishing me well.
John Scalzi
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Part of what makes us human is what we mean to other people, and what people mean to us.
John Scalzi
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It's easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she's never been anything but dead, than to miss her at all the places where she was alive.
John Scalzi
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The recruit was Sam McCain; in one of our lunch sessions I recalled Sarah O'Connell describing him as more mouth than brain. Unsurprisingly, he'd been in sales most of his life.
John Scalzi
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Some people are just no good at not being in charge.
John Scalzi
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Obviously, the Rraey have some way to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, where our ships are going to skip. How do they do that?
I don't think you're supposed to be able to, I said.
That's exactly right. But they do anyway. So, quite obviously, our model of how skipping works is wrong. Theory gets thrown out the window when observation proves it isn't so. The question now is what is really going on.
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Look, I said. Something that needs your attention. Over there. Away from here.
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I didn't say that, Szilard said, in a tone that implied that perhaps he had.
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You and I don't actually need to be here for this, I said to the goat. The goat didn't respond, but I could tell she agreed with me.
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Imagine if every species named itself after its greatest flaw. We could name our species arrogance.
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Speaking of secrets, how are your negotiations with the Obin going?
Both Mattson and Robbins looked at Szilard warily. There are no negotiations with the Obin, Robbins said.
Of course not, Szilard said. You're not negotiating with the Obin to continue Boutin's consciousness program for them. And the Obin are not negotiating with us to knock down whichever of the Rraey or Eneshans is still left standing after their upcoming little war. No one's negotiating with anyone about anything. And how are these non-negotiations not going?
Robbins looked at Mattson, who nodded. They're not going surprisingly well, Robbins said. We probably won't reach an agreement in the next couple of days.
How not wonderful, Szilard said.
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When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it.
John Scalzi
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I don't care whether I really exist or don't, whether I'm real or fictional. What I want right now is to be the person who decides my own fate.
John Scalzi
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I have no idea what that means, Nick, Paulson said. Talk normal human to me.
John Scalzi
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I'm not insane, sir, I said. I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.
John Scalzi
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Do you believe that? I asked.
It doesn't matter whether I believe it or not, Redhouse said.
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Those people you saw—the realborn—are born without a plan. They're born because biology tells humans to make more humans; but it doesn't consider what to do with them after that. Realborn go for years without the slightest clue what they're going to do with themselves. From what I understand, some of them never actually figure it out. They just walk through life in a daze and then fall into their graves at the end of it. Sad. And inefficient.
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My marriage had its ups and downs like anyone's, but when it came down to it, I knew it was solid. I miss that sort of security, and that sort of connection with someone.
John Scalzi
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Star Wars is not entertainment. Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot.
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I was pretty certain my dad was not up to no good, running for senator notwithstanding.
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In other words, crew deaths are a feature, not a bug," Cassaway said, dryly.
John Scalzi
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Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
John Scalzi
Born:
May 10, 1969
(age 54)
Bio:
John Michael Scalzi II is an American science fiction author, online writer, and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Known for:
Old Man's War (2005)
Redshirts (2012)
Lock In (2014)
The Human Division (2013)
The End of All Things (2015)
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szilard
obin
robbins
boutin
human
negotiations
sort
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geek
weapon
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