Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)

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Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.

Vernor Vinge
If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

Vernor Vinge
Over the last few weeks, some newsgroups have been full of tales of war and battle fleets, of billions dying in the clash of species. To all such—and those living more peaceably around them—we say look out on the universe. It does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

Vernor Vinge
How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

Vernor Vinge
If during the last thousand seconds you have received any High-Beyond-protocol packets from "Arbitration Arts," discard them at once. If they have been processed, then the processing site and all locally netted sites must be physically destroyed at once. We realize that this means the destruction of solar systems, but consider the alternative. You are under Transcendent attack.

Vernor Vinge
I have come to kill you.
The death's heads shrugged. You have come to try.

Vernor Vinge
He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

Vernor Vinge
The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.

Vernor Vinge
"Poor humans; they will all die."
"Poor us; we will not."

Vernor Vinge
The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.

Vernor Vinge
One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

Vernor Vinge
Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.

Vernor Vinge
Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.

Vernor Vinge
The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

Vernor Vinge
Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and least expensive manipulation of all.

Vernor Vinge
He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind—but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

Vernor Vinge
Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all—no one's around to write horror stories.

Vernor Vinge
We're long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.

Vernor Vinge
Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.

Vernor Vinge
Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.

Vernor Vinge
All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge.... And now revenge was all that life had left for him.

Vernor Vinge
Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years—and not one of them could come near to this!

Vernor Vinge
The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as long as all the time before.

Vernor Vinge
"Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots."

Vernor Vinge
Hexapodia as the key insight...
I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?

Vernor Vinge