Daedalus Quotes

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

There were a lot of answers I might've given, from "I knew that" to "LIAR!" to "Yeah right, and I'm Zeus." - Percy, after Quintus says that he is Daedalus

Then there were those famous wings. Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?

A tinkerer,” snapped Pasiphaë. “Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.” Leo blinked. “Daedalus…like, the Daedalus? Well, then, you should know all about us tinkerers. We’re more into fixing, building, occasionally sticking wads of oilcloth in the mouths of rude ladies—

Athena called, "Annabeth Chase, my own daughter." Annabeth squeezed my arm, then walked forward and knelt at her mother's feet. Athena smiled. "You, my daughter, have exceeded all expectations. You have used your wits, your strength, and your courage to defend this city, and our seat of power. It has come to our attention that Olympus is...well, trashed. The Titan lord did much damage that will have to be repaired. We could rebuild it by magic, of course, and make it just as it was. But the gods feel that the city could be improved. We will take this as an opportunity. And you, my daughter, will design these improvements." Annabeth looked up, stunned. "My...my lady?" Athena smiled wryly. "You are an architect, are you not? You have studied the techniques of Daedalus himself. Who better to redesign Olympus and make it a monument that will last for another eon?" "You mean...I can design whatever I want?" "As your heart desires," the goddess said. "Make us a city for the ages." "As long as you have plenty of statues of me," Apollo added. "And me," Aphrodite agreed. "Hey, and me!" Ares said. "Big statues with huge wicked swords and-" All right!" Athena interrupted. "She gets the point. Rise, my daughter, official architect of Olympus.

There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.

I had no idea how Annabeth Chase had figured out that the Daedalus command could be used on any automaton. Then again, she’d been able to redesign my palace on Mount Olympus with perfect acoustics and surround-sound speakers in the bathroom, so her cleverness shouldn’t have surprised me.

I don't know if Daedalus will help you, lad, but don't judge someone until you've stood at his forge and worked with his hammer, eh?

Daemon is just .. you know, a bit overprotective when it comes to you.” His sister laughed. “A bit?” “Okay. A lot. It’s not against Archer. He’s actually a really good guy. He helped me – helped us – while we were with Daedalus, but he’s older, he’s different, and he –“ “Has a penis?” Dee supplied. “Because I think that’s Daemon’s main problem.

Daedalus had said to me once: Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.

It was as if we found the still heart of the universe. Nothing moved except for us.

You shall delve in the darkness of the endless maze,” I remembered. “The dead, the traitor, and the lost one raise. We raised a lot of the dead. We saved Ethan Nakamura, who turned out to be a traitor. We raised the spirit of Pan, the lost one.” Annabeth shook her head like she wanted me to stop. “You shall rise or fall by the ghost king’s hand,” I pressed on. “That wasn’t Minos, like I’d thought. It was Nico. By choosing to be on our side, he saved us. And the child of Athena’s final stand—that was Daedalus.” “Percy—” “Destroy with a hero’s final breath. That makes sense now. Daedalus died to destroy the Labyrinth. But what was the last—” “And lose a love to worse than death.” Annabeth

I’ve done some exploring,” he said. “Thought you’d like to know, Daedalus got his punishment.” “You saw him?” Nico nodded. “Minos wanted to boil him in cheese fondue for eternity, but my father had other ideas. Daedalus will be building overpasses and exit ramps in Asphodel for all time. It’ll help ease the traffic congestion. Truthfully, I think the old guy is pretty happy with that. He’s still building. Still creating. And he gets to see his son and Perdix on the weekends.

The hills and trees before me, the worms and lions, stones and tender buds, Daedalus’ loom, all wavered as if they were a fraying dream. Beneath them was the place I truly dwelt, a cold eternity of endless grief.

Quintus stared at me. “My boy, you need lessons from your friend on seeing clearly. I am Daedalus.

Daedalus did not long outlive his son. His limbs turned gray and nerveless, and all his strength was transmuted into smoke. I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

Man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.

The second reminder is this: while technological advancements can carry humankind to impossible heights, power must be exercised responsibly. After all, people tend to forget that Daedalus’s wings for his son did work; it was Icarus who used them incorrectly.

Daedalus, ut fama est, fugiens Minoia regna praepetibus pennis ausus se credere caelo insuetum per iter gelidas enauit ad Arctos, Chalcidicaque leuis tandem super adstitit arce.

The lives of such characters as Heracles, Daedalus, Teiresias, and Phineus span several generations, because these are titles rather than names of particular heroes.

had said. The DOD and Daedalus believe my mutation wore off. Good news, right? But he’s desperate—more so than we realized. If we don’t

He stared back at me so blatantly I wanted to smack him. “I know. Like I said, that… was never my intention. It was an accident.” My mouth dropped open. “Did you slip and fall on my bed? Because I don’t understand how you’ve accidentally ended up there.” Red stained the tips of his cheeks. “I check the outside, and then I check the inside just to be sure. Hybrids can get into your house, Katy, as you already know. So could Daedalus if they wanted.” What would he have done if Daemon had been there? Then it struck me and I felt sick all over again. “How long do you watch at night?” He shrugged. “A couple of hours.” So he’d have known if Daemon had come over most of the time, and the rest was just sheer dumb luck. Part of me wished he’d tried it just once when Daemon was there. He wouldn’t be walking right for months. There was a good chance he may leave this stairwell with a limp. Blake seemed to sense where my mind went. “After I checked inside your house, I… I don’t know what happened. You have bad dreams.” I wondered why. I had perverts sleeping in the bed with me.

If it helps you, I would like to be a partner to you,” Daedalus said. “I know I am an imperfect substitute for whoever you have lost. But we are both alone, and I think we could help each other. Sorrows can be shared, as easily as games of Go.

It was Daedalus who answered. A golden cage is still a cage.

He (Daedalus) would follow that bearing, the sun on his shoulders and the past slipping away.

Hello, Hermes! Command sequence: Daedalus Twenty-three. Kill Flying Pigs! Begin Activation!” Immediately the statue moved

Hello, Hermes! Command sequence: Daedalus Twenty-three. Kill Flying Pigs! Begin Activation!

She fell in love with him, and to save his life smuggled him a sword and taught him the way through the Labyrinth, which she had learned from Daedalus himself.

When I was a boy and everyone played at wrestling monsters like Heracles, I dreamed of being Daedalus instead. It seemed the greater genius to look at raw wood and iron, and imagine marvels.

Annabeth pushed over an easel. Architectural drawing scattered across the floor. “I used to respect you. You were my hero! You—you built amazing things. You solved problems. Now…I don’t know what you are. Children of Athena are supposed to be wise, not just clever. Maybe you are just a machine. You should have died two thousand years ago.

What if it were possible or even entertaining, to recreate and transform one of the old myths and infuse it with a different meaning?...Imagine being guided by your mythology that it is better to thrive and prosper, than just to survive.

We can fortell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be.

Daedalus’s blood ran cold. “No?” he shook off his son’s arm. “For once you have tasted flight …” His voice was desperate now. “…you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation, like the statues of Daedalus or the tripods made by Hephaestus, of which Homer relates that "Of their own motion they entered the conclave of Gods on Olympus", as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing.

It took me some time to understand it, for it was like no loom I had ever known in the halls of the gods. There was a seat, and the weft was drawn down rather than up. If my grandmother had seen, she would have offered her sea snake for it; the cloth it produced was finer than her best. Daedalus had guessed well: that I would like the whole business of it, the simplicity and skill at once, the smell of the wood, the shush of the shuttle, the satisfying way weft stacked upon weft. It was a little like spell-work, I thought, for your hands must be busy, and your mind sharp and free.

Daedalus had told me a story once about the lords of Crete who used to hire him to enlarge their houses. He would arrive with his tools, begin taking down the walls, pulling up the floors. But whenever he found some problem underneath that must first be fixed, they frowned. That was not in the agreement! Of course not, he said, it has been hidden in the foundation, but look, there it is, plain as day. See the cracked beam? See the beetles eating the floor? See how the stone is sinking into the swamp? That only made the lords angrier. It was fine until you dug it up! We will not pay! Close it up, plaster over. It has stood this long, it will stand longer. So he would seal that fault up, and the next season the house would fall down. Then they would come to him, demanding back their money. “I told them,” he said to me. “I told them and told them. When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.” The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

I'm looking for the labyrinth. The form that Dedalus gave me to the most disturbing question: How much of us is thought, reason, intellect... and how much delirium, hallucination, madness... and how much is a monster. The failure of every plan. A path with no way out.

The air is not empty space to them, it is as solid as the earth to us, or water to a fish. It holds them up and it will hold us up.

Even a best iron grows brittle with too much beating

daedalus84: Marx’s death didn’t just happen to you. He was my friend. He was my partner. It was our company. These things happened to both of us.

I was disappointed to find out I did not have the talent for it. I was always cutting my fingers open. I thought of the white scars on Daedalus' hands. But I held back.

I closed my eyes, to find that impression I had made of Daedalus' face.

I love you,” Daedalus said. “It is hard for me to say, because sometimes it doesn’t seem like it is enough.

Daedalus, I have found that the most intimate relationships allow for a great deal of privacy within them.

EMILY MARKS DAEDALUS 1875-1909 SHE HATH DIED OF DYSENTERY

At every stage of technique since Daedalus or Hero of Alexandria, the ability of the artificer to produce a working simulacrum of a living organism has always intrigued people.

Escape may be checked by water and land, but the air en sky are free. -Daedalus

The builder, Daedalus, was a genius.

There is an art, Mr Daedalus, in lighting a fire. —So I see, sir. A very useful art. —That’s it: a useful art. We have the useful arts and we have the liberal arts.

I love you,” Daedalus said. “It is hard for me to say, because sometimes it doesn’t seems like it is enough.

It was Daedalus who answered. A golden cage is still a cage.

AND SO THE STORY ENDS, bracketed by two architects: Daedalus, who built the Minoan labyrinth, and Ventris, who found the thread that unraveled the tangle of writing unearthed there.

Where are you?” she shouted. “Don’t you see us?” taunted the woman’s voice. “I thought Hecate chose you for your skill.” Another bout of queasiness churned through Hazel’s gut. On her shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which didn’t help. Dark spots floated in Hazel’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors. The giant Clytius was shrouded in the black smoke, just as she’d seen in her vision at the crossroads, but now Hazel could dimly make out his form—dragon-like legs with ash-colored scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armor; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death’s (Hazel should know, since she had met Death personally). His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying. Leo whistled. “You know, Clytius…for such a big dude, you’ve got a beautiful voice.” “Idiot,” hissed the woman. Halfway between Hazel and the giant, the air shimmered. The sorceress appeared. She wore an elegant sleeveless dress of woven gold, her dark hair piled into a cone, encircled with diamonds and emeralds. Around her neck hung a pendant like a miniature maze, on a cord set with rubies that made Hazel think of crystallized blood drops. The woman was beautiful in a timeless, regal way—like a statue you might admire but could never love. Her eyes sparkled with malice. “Pasiphaë,” Hazel said. The woman inclined her head. “My dear Hazel Levesque.” Leo coughed. “You two know each other? Like Underworld chums, or—” “Silence, fool.” Pasiphaë’s voice was soft, but full of venom. “I have no use for demigod boys—always so full of themselves, so brash and destructive.” “Hey, lady,” Leo protested. “I don’t destroy things much. I’m a son of Hephaestus.” “A tinkerer,” snapped Pasiphaë. “Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.” Leo blinked. “Daedalus…like, the Daedalus? Well, then, you should know all about us tinkerers. We’re more into fixing, building, occasionally sticking wads of oilcloth in the mouths of rude ladies—” “Leo.” Hazel put her arm across his chest. She had a feeling the sorceress was about to turn him into something unpleasant if he didn’t shut up. “Let me take this, okay?

Daedalus realized he had some work ahead of him. He’d have to make sure the royal brain didn’t get pulled over for going under the speed limit. Still, it beat sitting in the Labyrinth.

Can you please tell me who you people are?" "Criminals. Offenders. Monsters. We've all been imprisoned in Tartarus for discretions committed against the gods of Olympus." ~ Hope/Daedalus, The River Styx

It looks as if I was cleverer than Daedalus in using my skill, my friend, insofar as he could only cause to move the things he made himself, but I can make other people’s move as well as my own. And the smartest part of my skill is that I am clever without wanting to be, for I would rather have your statements to me remain unmoved than possess the wealth of Tantalus as well as the cleverness of Daedalus

Daedalus took comfort in the baby Icarus, and I loved to see him walking about with the infant dandled in his arms, showing the oblivious child the flowers and the birds and the many wonders of the palace.

Yes,” I said. “She did.” The satisfaction shone on his face. When he was an infant, his head had seemed to me delicate as glass. I used to trace its bones with my finger while he slept. “I knew she would. She is desperate. She sought to bind me, but she has bound herself. Her fratricide will hang upon her all her days.” “I grieve for your son’s death,” I said. “She will pay for it,” he said. “Send her out.” My woods had gone quiet behind me. All the animals were still, crouching to the ground. As a child, he had liked to lean his head upon my shoulder and watch the seagulls dip to catch their fish. His laugh had been bright as morning sun. “I met Daedalus,” I said. He frowned. “Daedalus? He has been dead for years. Where is Medea? Give her to me.” “She is not here,” I said. If I had turned the sea to stone I do not think he could have been more shocked. His face bloomed with incredulity and rage. “You let her go?

For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside of the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvellous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy, or control the levels of watercourses. There is nothing this cunning man cannot contrive in his workshop. There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, boxes that play music and devices that can awaken him in the morning. Even if only half the stories of what Daedalus can achieve are true then you can be certain that no more cunning and clever an inventor, architect and craftsman has ever walked this earth.

As a wedding gift to Ms. Marks, Dr. Daedalus created a topiary hedge maze in the garden by her house. When asked why she had decided to make such a gift, the doctor replied cryptically, “To make a game is to imagine the person playing

The doctor had installed a portal that connected Emily’s store to her house, allowing her to bypass her commute. The portal was sage green and had three golden dots painted on the side: Emily studied the dots. “Is that an upside-down ‘therefore’ symbol?” “When the dots are placed this way, they mean ‘because.’ I know my house is closer to town than yours. If you do ever decide to marry me,” Daedalus said, “I did not wish convenience to be a factor in your decision.

As a wedding gift to Ms. Marks, Dr. Daedalus created a topiary hedge maze in the garden by her house. When asked why she had decided to make such a gift, the doctor replied cryptically, “To make a game is to imagine the person playing it.

In most respects, it was an ordinary marriage, punctuated by competitive rounds of Go. Indeed, Emily felt the greatest intimacy with Daedalus when they were playing games together. She confessed to Alabaster, “There must be more to life than working and swimming and playing Go.” “The boredom you speak of,” Alabaster said. “It is what most of us call happiness.” “I suppose.” Alabaster sighed. “This is the game, Emily.” “What game?” Alabaster rolled their lilac eyes. “You are happy, and you are bored. You need to find a new pastime.

Daedalus did not long outlive his son. His limbs turned grey, and all his strength was transmuted into smoke. I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation he was to me.

Daedalus did not long outlive his son. His limbs turned grey and nerveless, and all his strength was transmuted into smoke. I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near into yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

Flare riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence, and those who can dare and afford to do it are among the most lionized men in the Galaxy. It is also of course stupefyingly dangerous—those who don’t die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of the Daedalus Club’s Après-Flare parties.

Daedalus had told me a story once about the lords of Crete who used to hire him to enlarge their houses. He would arrive with his tools, begin taking down the walls, pulling up the floors. But whenever he found some problem underneath that must first be fixed, they frowned. That was not in the agreement! Of course not, he said, it has been hidden in the foundation, but look, there it is, plain as day. See the cracked beam? See the beetles eating the floor? See how the stone is sinking into the swamp? That only made the lords angrier. It was fine until you dug it up! We will not pay! Close it up, plaster over. It has stood this long, it will stand longer.

In almost all human history, figures descending from the sky would have been angels or gods or demons -- or Icarus hurtling down, his father, Daedalus, following too slowly to catch the vainglorious boy. What must it have felt like to inhabit a commonality of human experience -- all eyes to the sky, watching for some mythic to land?

On the day she found Daedalus blowing the glass heart, she had suspected Sam, but she had also allowed herself not to know. She wanted to play more than she wanted to know. Sadie told Sam he had tricked her, but the truth was, she had tricked herself. It was embarrassing how much that silly, exquisite world had meant to her. A year and a half later, she

Why did every prize, every great significance at the end of struggle, all heroism & courage have to disappear into a number behind a dollar sign?

A golden cage is still a cage

Escape may be checked by water and land, but the air and the sky are free.

You can't succeed if you fail to try.

I had not fooled myself with false hope. I was a goddess, and he a mortal, and both of us were imprisoned. But I pressed his face into my mind, as seals are pressed in wax, so I could carry it with me.

A happy child." Daedalus sat, drank a swallow of wine. "For now, he is. He is too young to know himself a prisoner." Those white scars seemed to flare on his hands. "A golden cage is still a cage." "And where would you go, if you might escape?" "Wherever would have me. But if I may choose, Egypt. They are building things that make Knossos look like a mudflat. I have been learning the language from some of their traders on the docks. I think they would welcome us." I looked into his good face. Not because it was handsome, but because it was itself, like fine metal, tempered and beaten for strength. Two monsters we had fought side by side, and he had not wavered. Come to Aiaia, I wanted to say. But I knew there was nothing for him there. Instead I told him, "I hope you will get to Egypt one day.

Daedalus said you shouldn’t fly too low. If you do, the water will fatally weigh down your wings and you will surely perish. Don’t fly too high either. The sun will melt the wax holding your wings together, and you will plunge to your death. So, moderation in all things. Always follow the middle course. How dull. Set your sights higher. Go as high as you can, all the way to the top. We are the people of the peaks, not the middle of the road.

Dr. Nicole Martin.” Riker felt Myne’s eyes boring into him. “She’s alive?” “Apparently.” A shiver of hatred slithered up Riker’s spine. Until last week, when he’d seen a newspaper article glorifying the return of the Martin heir, he’d believed only one member of the godforsaken immediate family, Charles, was alive. “After the rest of the Martins were slaughtered in the rebellion, she was sent to Paris to live with her mother’s relatives until she was old enough to work in Daedalus’s French division as a vampire physiologist.” The mere mention of the infamous Seattle Slave Rebellion made Myne’s voice degenerate into gravel. “And she’s here now?” Riker nodded at the female in the window. “Right there and all grown up. And if you’re done jacking off your dagger, we’ll go have a chat with her.” “You think she’ll cooperate?” Hell no. She was a Martin, after all, current CEO of the company that had revolutionized vampire slavery and used vampires like lab rodents to advance human medicine. Daedalus went through vampires like a slaughterhouse went through cattle, and Riker doubted the company held to any kind of “humane” standards. “For her sake,” Riker said slowly, “I hope so.

If it helps you, I would like to be a partner to you, Daedalus said. I know I am an imperfect substitute for whoever you have lost, but we are both alone and I think we could help each other. Sorrows can be shared as easily as games of Go. She reached for Emily’s hand and she got down on one knee. I would like to propose to you, leave the Fog Lands, come to Verdant Valley. Do you mean marriage? It doesn’t have to have a name Daedalus said it can have a name if you want it to have a name. What would it mean then? It means a very long game of Go played without stops. In the past, Emily had many reasons for not wishing to marry. Among them her belief that marriage was conventional and a trap for women. She had rejected 2 engagements in her previous life. But at this juncture she could see the facility of embarking on a different course.

I was standing amid floor-to-ceiling shelves of books in wonder and awe when my view of stories suddenly and forever changed. There were enormous piles of books lying in corners. Books covered the walls. Books even lined the staircases as you went up from one floor to the next. It was as if this used bookstore was not just a place for selling used books; it was like the infrastructure itself was made up of books. There were books to hold more books, stories built out of stories. I was standing in Daedalus Books in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I had recently read Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book. I was alive with the desire to read. But at that particular moment, my glee turned to horror. For whatever reason, the truth of the numbers suddenly hit me. The year before, I had read about thirty books. For me, that was a new record. But then I started counting. I was in my early twenties, and with any luck I'd live at least fifty more years. At that rate, I'd have about 1,500 books in me, give or take. There were more books than that on the single wall I was staring at. That's when I had a realization of my mortality. My desire outpaced reality. I simply didn't have the life to read what I wanted to read. Suddenly my choices in that bookstore became a profound act of deciding. The Latin root of the word decide—cise or cide— is to "cut off' or "kill." The idea is that to choose anything means to kill off other options you might have otherwise chosen. That day I realized that by choosing one story, I would have to cut off other stories. I had to choose one thing at the expense of many, many other things. I would have to choose carefully. I would have to curate my stories.... Curating stories used to be a matter of luxury. Now it's a matter of necessity—and perhaps even urgency.

In the evenings after dinner, I set myself before Daedalus’ loom. It took me some time to understand it, for it was like no loom I had ever known in the halls of the gods. There was a seat, and the weft was drawn down rather than up. If my grandmother had seen, she would have offered her sea snake for it; the cloth it produced was finer than her best. Daedalus had guessed well: that I would like the whole business of it, the simplicity and skill at once, the smell of the wood, the shush of the shuttle, the satisfying way weft stacked upon weft. It was a little like spell-work, I thought, for your hands must be busy, and your mind sharp and free. Yet my favorite part was not the loom at all, but the making of the dyes. I went hunting for the best colors, madder root and saffron, the scarlet kermes bug and the wine-dark murex from the sea, and alum powder to hold them fast in the wool. I squeezed them, pounded, soaked them in great bubbling pots until the stinking liquids foamed up bright as flowers: crimson and crocus yellow and the deep purple that

The word smacked me in the face like Ares’s body odour. I turned to Austin. ‘The Labyrinth? As in Daedalus’s Labyrinth?’ Austin nodded, his fingers worrying the ceramic camp beads around his neck. I had a sudden memory of his mother, Latricia – the way she used to fiddle with her cowry necklace when she lectured at Oberlin. Even I learned things from Latricia Lake’s music theory class, though I had found her distractingly beautiful. ‘During the war with Gaia,’ Austin said, ‘the maze reopened. We’ve been trying to map it ever since.’ ‘That’s impossible,’ I said. ‘Also insane. The Labyrinth is a malevolent sentient creation! It can’t be mapped or trusted.’ As usual, I could only draw on random bits and pieces of my memories, but I was fairly certain I spoke the truth. I remembered Daedalus. Back in the old days, the king of Crete had ordered him to build a maze to contain the monstrous Minotaur. But, oh no, a simple maze wasn’t good enough for a brilliant inventor like Daedalus. He had to make his Labyrinth self-aware and self-expanding. Over the centuries, it had honeycombed under the planet’s surface like an invasive root system. Stupid brilliant inventors.

Indeed, equal amounts of research support both assertions: that mentorship works and that it doesn’t. Mentoring programs break down in the workplace so often that scholarly research contradicts itself about the value of mentoring at all, and prompts Harvard Business Review articles with titles such as “Why Mentoring Doesn’t Work.” The mentorship slip is illustrated well by family businesses: 70 percent of them fail when passed to the second generation. A business-owner parent is in a perfect spot to mentor his or her child to run a company. And yet, sometime between mentorship and the business handoff, something critical doesn’t stick. One of the most tantalizing ideas about training with a master is that the master can help her protégé skip several steps up the ladder. Sometimes this ends up producing Aristotle. But sometimes it produces Icarus, to whom his father and master craftsman Daedalus of Greek mythology gave wings; Icarus then flew too high too fast and died. Jimmy Fallon’s mentor, one of the best-connected managers Jimmy could have for his SNL dream, served him up on a platter to SNL auditions in a fraction of the expected time it should take a new comedian to get there. But Jimmy didn’t cut it—yet. There was still one more ingredient, the one that makes the difference between rapid-rising protégés who soar and those who melt their wings and crash. III.

IF, O most illustrious Knight, I had driven a plough, pastured a herd, tended a garden, tailored a garment: none would regard me, few observe me, seldom a one reprove me; and I could easily satisfy all men. But since I would survey the field of Nature, care for the nourishment of the soul, foster the cultivation of talent, become expert as Daedalus concerning the ways of the intellect; lo, one doth threaten upon beholding me, another doth assail me at sight, another doth bite upon reaching me, yet another who hath caught me would devour me; not one, nor few, they are many, indeed almost all. If you would know why, it is because I hate the mob, I loathe the vulgar herd and in the multitude I find no joy. It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death. Through her virtue I envy not those who are bond though free, who grieve in the midst of pleasures, who endure poverty in their wealth, and a living death. They carry their chains within them; their spirit containeth her own hell that bringeth them low; within their soul is the disease that wasteth, and within their mind the lethargy that bringeth death. They are without the generosity that would enfranchise, the long suffering that exalteth, the splendour that doth illumine, knowledge that bestoweth life. Therefore I do not in weariness shun the arduous path, nor idly refrain my arm from the present task, nor retreat in despair from the enemy that confronteth me, nor do I turn my dazzled eyes from the divine end. Yet I am aware that I am mostly held to be a sophist, seeking rather to appear subtle than to reveal the truth; an ambitious fellow diligent rather to support a new and false sect than to establish the ancient and true; a snarer of birds who pursueth the splendour of fame, by spreading ahead the darkness of error; an unquiet spirit that would undermine the edifice of good discipline to establish the frame of perversity. Wherefore, my lord, may the heavenly powers scatter before me all those who unjustly hate me; may my God be ever gracious unto me; may all the rulers of our world be favourable to me; may the stars yield me seed for the field and soil for the seed, that the harvest of my labour may appear to the world useful and glorious, that souls may be awakened and the understanding of those in darkness be illumined. For assuredly I do not feign; and if I err, I do so unwittingly; nor do I in speech or writing contend merely for victory, for I hold worldly repute and hollow success without truth to be hateful to God, most vile and dishonourable. But I thus exhaust, vex and torment myself for love of true wisdom and zeal for true contemplation. This I shall make manifest by conclusive arguments, dependent on lively reasonings derived from regulated sensation, instructed by true phenomena; for these as trustworthy ambassadors emerge from objects of Nature, rendering themselves present to those who seek them, obvious to those who gaze attentively on them, clear to those who apprehend, certain and sure to those who understand. Thus I present to you my contemplation concerning the infinite universe and innumerable worlds.

With respect to fear of death, Rousseau flatly denies that man does naturally fear death, and hence denies the premise of Hobbes's political philosophy (as well as what appears to be the common opinion of all political thinkers). He does not disagree with the modern natural right thinkers that man's only natural vocation is self-preservation or that he seeks to avoid pain. But Rousseau insists that man is not at first aware of the meaning of death, nor does man change his beliefs or ways of life to avoid it. Death, as Hobbes's man sees it, is a product of the imagination; and only on the basis of that imagination will he give up his natural idle and pleasure-loving life in order to pursue power after power so as to forestall death's assaults. The conception that life can be extinguished turns life, which is the condition of living, into an end itself. No animal is capable of such a conception, and, therefore, no animal thus transforms his life. Rousseau suggests that a man can be kept at the animal's unconscious level in regard to death long enough for him to have established a fixed and unchanging positive way of life and be accustomed to pain as well as knowledgeable enough not to be overwhelmed by the fact of death when he becomes fully aware of it. Ordinarily fear of death leads to one of two possible responses: superstition or the attempt to conquer death. The first gives hope that gods will protect men here or provide them with another life. The second, that of the enlightenment, uses science to prolong life and establish solid political regimes, putting off the inevitable and absorbing men in the holding action. Neither faces the fact of death, and both pervert consciousness. This is what Socrates meant by the dictum that philosophy is ‘learning how to die.’ All men die, and many die boldly or resolutely. But practically none does so without illusion.

In ancient days two aviators procured to themselves wings. Daedalus flew safely through the middle air across the sea, and was duly honored on his landing. Young Icarus soared upwards towards the sun till the wax melted which bound his wings, and his flight ended in fiasco. In weighing their achievements perhaps there is something to be said for Icarus. The classic authorities tell us that he was only "doing a stunt," but I prefer to think of him as the man who certainly brought to light a constructional defect in the flying machines of his day. So too in science. Cautious Daedalus will apply his theories where he feels most confident they will safely go; but by his excess of caution their hidden weaknesses can not be brought to light. Icarus will strain his theories to the breaking-point till the weak joints gape. For a spectacular stunt? Perhaps partly; he is often very human. But if he is not yet destined to reach the sun and solve for all time the riddle of its constitution, yet he may hope to learn from his journey some hints to build a better machine

Minos tapped his chin. “I like your plan. Build this maze. We will call it…the Funhouse!” “Erm, I was thinking something more mysterious and terrifying,” Daedalus said. “Perhaps the Labyrinth?” “Fine. Whatever.

...The other picture is of three Europeans in India looking at a great new star in the milky way. These were apparently all of the guests at a large dance who were interested in such matters. Amongst those who were at all competent to form views as to the origin of this cosmoclastic explosion, the most popular theory attributed it to a collision between two stars, or a star and a nebula. There seem, however, to be at least two possible alternatives to this hypothesis. Perhaps it was the last judgement of some inhabited world, perhaps a too successful experiment in induced radioactivity the part of some of the dwellers there. And perhaps also these two hypotheses are identical, and what we were watching that evening was the detonation of a world on which too many men came out to look at the stars when they should have been dancing.

Aristotle, around 350 BCE, raised the possibility of machines replacing humans: For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, “of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods”; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.

time is long since come. Be released and rest.” A smile of relief spread across Daedalus’s face. He froze like a statue. His skin turned transparent, revealing the bronze gears and machinery whirring inside his body. Then the statue turned to gray ash and disintegrated.

I look back over the decades and see him toiling in his workshop, Mrs Bowerman carefully helping, and I get goosebumps. He was Edison in Menlo Park, Da Vinci in Florence, Tesla in Wardenclyffe. Divinely inspired, I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, that he was the Daedalus of sneakers, that he was making history, remaking the industry, transforming the way athletes would run and stop and jump for generations. I wonder if he could conceive in that moment all that he'd done. All that would follow. I know I couldn't.

The Primary Act. As they entered the cinema, Dr Nathan confided to Captain Webster, ‘Talbert has accepted in absolute terms the logic of the sexual union. For him all junctions, whether of our own soft biologies or the hard geometries of these walls and ceilings, are equivalent to one another. What Talbert is searching for is the primary act of intercourse, the first apposition of the dimensions of time and space. In the multiplied body of the film actress - one of the few valid landscapes of our age - he finds what seems to be a neutral ground. For the most part the phenomenology of the world is a nightmarish excrescence. Our bodies, for example, are for him monstrous extensions of puffy tissue he can barely tolerate. The inventory of the young woman is in reality a death kit.’ Webster watched the images of the young woman on the screen, sections of her body intercut with pieces of modern architecture. All these buildings. What did Talbert want to do - sodomize the Festival Hall? Pressure Points. Koester ran towards the road as the helicopter roared overhead, its fans churning up a storm of pine needles and cigarette cartons. He shouted at Catherine Austin, who was squatting on the nylon blanket, steering her body stocking around her waist. Two hundred yards beyond the pines was the perimeter fence. She followed Koester along the verge, the pressure of his hands and loins still marking her body. These zones formed an inventory as sterile as the items in Talbert’s kit. With a smile she watched Koester trip clumsily over a discarded tyre. This unattractive and obsessed young man - why had she made love to him? Perhaps, like Koester, she was merely a vector in Talbert’s dreams. Central Casting. Dr Nathan edged unsteadily along the catwalk, waiting until Webster had reached the next section. He looked down at the huge geometric structure that occupied the central lot of the studio, now serving as the labyrinth in an elegant film version of The Minotaur . In a sequel to Faustus and The Shrew , the film actress and her husband would play Ariadne and Theseus. In a remarkable way the structure resembled her body, an exact formalization of each curve and cleavage. Indeed, the technicians had already christened it ‘Elizabeth’. He steadied himself on the wooden rail as the helicopter appeared above the pines and sped towards them. So the Daedalus in this neural drama had at last arrived. An Unpleasant Orifice. Shielding his eyes, Webster pushed through the camera crew. He stared up at the young woman standing on the roof of the maze, helplessly trying to hide her naked body behind her slim hands. Eyeing her pleasantly, Webster debated whether to climb on to the structure, but the chances of breaking a leg and falling into some unpleasant orifice seemed too great. He stood back as a bearded young man with a tight mouth and eyes ran forwards. Meanwhile Talbert strolled in the centre of the maze, oblivious of the crowd below, calmly waiting to see if the young woman could break the code of this immense body. All too clearly there had been a serious piece of miscasting. ‘Alternate’ Death. The helicopter was burning briskly. As the fuel tank exploded, Dr Nathan stumbled across the cables. The aircraft had fallen on to the edge of the maze, crushing one of the cameras. A cascade of foam poured over the heads of the retreating technicians, boiling on the hot concrete around the helicopter. The body of the young woman lay beside the controls like a figure in a tableau sculpture, the foam forming a white fleece around her naked shoulders.

How frustrated the impatient carpenter, whose tools have wings and free will.

In the same way that Firestone’s embrace of scientific and technological progress as manifest destiny tips its hat to Marx and Engels, so also it resembles (perhaps even more closely) the Marxist-inspired biofuturism of the interwar period, particularly in Britain, in the work of writers such as H. G. Wells, J. B. S. Haldane, J. D. Bernal, Julian Huxley, Conrad Waddington, and their contemporaries (including Gregory Bateson and Joseph Needham, the latter of whose embryological interests led to his enduring fascination with the history of technology in China). Interestingly, it is also in these early twentieth century writings that ideas about artificial reproduction, cybernation, space travel, genetic modification, and ectogenesis abound. As cultural theorist Susan Squier has demonstrated, debates about ectogenesis were crucial to both the scientific ambitions and futuristic narratives of many of the United Kingdom’s most eminent biologists from the 1920s and the 1930s onward. As John Burdon Sanderson (“Jack”) Haldane speculated in his famous 1923 paper “Daedalus, or Science and the Future” (originally read to the Heretics society in Cambridge) ectogenesis could provide a more efficient and rational basis for human reproduction in the future: [W]e can take an ovary from a woman, and keep it growing in a suitable fluid for as long as twenty years, producing a fresh ovum each month, of which 90 per cent can be fertilized, and the embryos grown successfully for nine months, and then brought out into the air.

Finally Aegeus was forced to surrender. Minos promised to lay off the destruction, but once every seven years, Athens had to send their seven bravest young men and seven most beautiful young ladies to Crete as tributes, where they were fed to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. If you’re thinking that sounds like The Hunger Games, that’s because this story inspired that one. And, no, the Labyrinth wasn’t televised, but only because Daedalus hadn’t invented TV yet.

I am like Icarus without wings. But the desire to fly was very strong in me. I think I was always looking for a Daedalus.

I am a technician but I am also a legend so that I survive suspended in a solution of memory.

I am not a god, and have never been made one, despite the abrasive of time, which sometimes grinds men into divine shapes.

It was not I who had cast Icarus into shadow, making his shadow monstrous. I had merely stepped between him and the sun for a moment – the moment that separated him from childhood and the achievement of death.

To keep up one's spirits with bragging is well enough when night comes on, but to imagine oneself responsible for the normal circle of day into night is a remarkable imaginative feat.

I had to evolve his shape as he rose and then combine in a single image the aspiration and the disaster, the triumph and defeat and the paradox of motionlessness at high velocity.