Sci Fi Novel Quotes

May the Force be with you.

To insinuate that I would break an oath that I made to the ALMIGHTY for my own personal gain is an insult. An insult to me and an insult to the Order. An insult, worthy of death.

A celestial wizard doesn’t destroy celestial bodies. She bends them.

When you call a ghetto a cordon, does it become a village?

He shredded my wings with his words.

Ketal is not hell! It’s the K’tul homeworld. What is the difference?

Let a sleeping dragon lie.

Sunny, a silver boy of nine, daydreams of rescuing two princesses: “The princesses’ savior was a gallant knight. No! A prince! The valiant prince was surprisingly young. And silvered.

We Yandar are winged. We don’t succumb to adversity; we fly with it.

Continue your search for the truth but remember one thing--all things are possible.

I would have hoped you would have learned by now. No matter, a man who refuses to face his destiny offers himself to the GOD of chance—and chance is a wayward bitch.

The heater spits a chorus of steam, his bones no longer brittle and cold. The ice man melted, a new form waiting to emerge once all the crystals get shaken away.

There should be multiple yous," Grayson says, outlined by the moonlight, a blue phantasm. "So you can help solve all of our problems. So you can help solve the world's problems.

You are one, and we are many, We are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We are the face of justice.

His eyes swelling with tears, the alien salt stinging. Not tears of sadness, this he decides. He won't let them be anything more than a body's way of letting go.

Fear, your fear takes hold of you…I can smell it. You are in my world now, and in my world, darkness is light.

Everyone is so enamored with the puppet; they never notice the man pulling the strings.

The Order? Here inside such a weak soul?” “His spirit is failing, his faith too old." “He cannot be saved." “Few have tried." “He is consumed by the lion." “He is overtaken by pride.

Boy, you are a hothead, Bane. Your rage makes you an exceptional warrior but quite a boring conversationalist. Good thing I did not keep you for your manners and charm, eh? Now calm down, your spittle is getting all over me, my feet do not require a shower." -Michael, The ArchAngel

HANG THE LAW AND FUCK THE RULES! Where is your love for others? Where is your compassion? All these warriors want is a chance to serve. Doesn’t their love supersede your rules?

While an elderly man in his mid-eighties looks curiously at a porno site, his grandson asks him from afar, “‘What are you reading, grandpa?’” “‘It’s history, my boy.’” “The grandson comes nearer and exclaims, “‘But this is a porno site, grandpa, naked chicks, sex . . . a lot of sex!’” “‘Well, it’s sex for you, my son, but for me it’s history,’ the old man says with a sigh.” All of people in the cabin burst into laughter. “A stale joke, but a cool one,” added William More, the man who just told the joke. The navigator skillfully guided the flying disc among the dense orange-yellow blanket of clouds in the upper atmosphere that they had just entered. Some of the clouds were touched with a brownish hue at the edges. The rest of the pilots gazed curiously and intently outwards while taking their seats. The flying saucer descended slowly, the navigator’s actions exhibiting confidence. He glanced over at the readings on the monitors below the transparent console: Atmosphere: Dense, 370 miles thick, 98.4% nitrogen, 1.4% methane Temperature on the surface: ‒179°C / ‒290°F Density: 1.88 g/cm³ Gravity: 86% of Earth’s Diameter of the cosmic body: 3200 miles / 5150 km.

You heard me. A creature from another world, a dark world, lurks the halls of Hellgate, tormenting victims at will. A grotesque, gnarled, twisted creature, with thick iron stakes impaled into its body, whip marks across its chest and back-- the beast got inside my brain.

This isn’t some sick sci-fi novel.

Monster? Monster, you say?” He scratched his chest, blood dripping from what seemed to be an old wound. “No, my friend. I have SEEN real monsters. I have faced real darkness, heart beating out of your chest with death all around you. The stench of piss and shit as men empty themselves in their final moments. I have experienced real terror. Terror, a simple man like you, could never fathom

Have you ever thought about why GOD did it? Why tempt such fragile beings in the first place? Did GOD give the race of man free will, knowing that they would use that will to defy him, or to take it a step further since GOD knows all, did he know that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit, allowing him to cast them out of paradise to toil and suffer for a living.

A spark is exactly what it means. An igniting of something that spreads, and soon it becomes difficult to contain. The sparks, in this case, represent sin, not just any sin, a major undertaking of evil that spreads and infects life, changing the way humans live forever." " The Everlasting protects man for six of these catastrophes, but once there is a seventh, well… anything goes." "I’m not destroying man; I’m saving man--from themselves.

We are Knights of the Trinity, Angels of the Third Realm of Heaven Warriors of The Almighty Defenders of Righteousness, Truth. And Justice Protectors of the Weak and Downtrodden Guardians of the realms of men. We pledge our spirits, our swords, and our shields in service, Not for glory, not for pride, but for the honor to serve the Most-High May the forces of Darkness tremble in our wake and die at our hands! We are the Chosen Twelve, the Blessed, the Mighty War-riors of the Everlasting Order Hazah! Hazah! Hazah!

Share and Enjoy' is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium-sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years. The motto stands-- or rather stood-- in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young Complaints executives-- now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig," and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.

I cannot go about killing people that do not know me or know of me. I do not kill for pleasure, or on impulse, but for survival and for necessity. That is what the wolf has taught me, and that is the way of all living things.

Sitting at his desk Remy filled out two forms and then played a few games of Tic-Tac-Toe against himself. Playing the “X’s”, he lost a seven game tournament four games to one.

Kings and dukes tended to appoint wizards as their principal advisors, a practice that often proved catastrophically wrong.

Finally, the sound fades and doesn’t return. Tsula sits alone in the quiet and the dark, shivering with such force that she fears her teeth might crack.

He sits up, grasps his carbine, and sneaks quietly from the tent. Outside the wind flows briskly through the trees, the shushing sound it makes like an admonition to them all.

Over time, it became apparent that no matter who ruled the country of Gundarland, the Godmother ruled the city of Dun Hythe.

The current needs of survival leave little time for luxuries like sentimentality. It is, he figures, a kind of mercy. No time to dwell on what was lost when there is more yet to protect.

She might not have read many books. But when she reads a book, she swallows the very words. If you open the books on her shelves, you will find that the front and back covers encase white pages.

Tell us, my dear,” Ansgar said. “What year is it?” “It’s 1536.” “That means . . . we were sealed up for 211 years,” Ansgar replied. “No wonder I need a beer,” Luc said. “That’s a long time to go without a drink.

Funny how if you were reading his dystopian sci-fi novel with a minor subplot about fascists ruling Korea, you'd be taken to jail. So you gotta wonder. Do they ban books because they see danger in their authors, or because they see themselves in their villains?

The mountains she’d viewed in childhood as nurturing have now taken on a menacing quality. Their stippled surfaces—the dark of trees rising from a background of white—give the impression of something more mythic than geological. Leviathans hibernating in the open, ready to stir at any moment and swallow her whole.

The bookcase was filled with computer games, history books, and sci-fi novels in about equal proportions. Odd reading choices, maybe, but I just thought of it as past and future history.

Tsula and Abbott spy the cabin in a clearing beyond the trees. It appears almost spectral through the gossamer mist—at first, just a hint of a shape. A blocky shadow rising from the ground.

Harlan chuckles to himself and shakes his head, as though enjoying a joke only he has heard. ‘Now I guess it’s only fair to warn you,’ he says. ‘This is not going to go the way you want it to.

Junior finds what he’s seeking in a swale between two ridges. He glasses down at the elk from a hillside aflame with autumn color. The animal strides through the clearing about five hundred yards due east, dipping its head now and then to nibble on receding grass that soon will disappear for the winter.

I am Bishop Connors of the Snotish Church. Where is the President?” “W . . . hat do you want to see him about?” “I don’t discuss church business with minions. Are you dead?” “I . . . ‘ve been dead for a long time.” “The Snotist Church has vowed to destroy abominations like you.” “Th . . . ank you for sharing that.

From the scene arrayed before her now, Tsula knows this new body means something entirely different. The tight bunchings of onlookers in hushed conversation. The watery eyes and mouths covered by fingers. This is how people gather when the dead is one of their own.

The same moment the hiker comes upon them, rounding the bend in the trail, Harlan knows the man will die. He takes no pleasure in the thought. So far as Harlan is aware, he has never met the man and has no quarrel with him. This stranger is simply an unexpected contingency. A loose thread that, once noticed, requires snipping.

Toward the back of the small property, Twentymile Creek flows through a ravine two to three feet deep and three times as wide. The waters of the creek, high and vigorous from recent rains, purl noisily around stones bearded with green moss and swatched with lichen. There she finds the body, stretched across the frothing stream.

Ah, life in medieval times! Yeah, we only have to worry about losing our heads every day.

Speak peace unto the world and good souls will stand.

Leticia believed in Snotism. Every morning she began the day with a prayer to the Great God, Gundar. Today was no different. While most of the heroes still slept, she recited the prayer, then took out a small vial and spilled a few grains of crushed pepper into her hand. Holding her palm under her nose, she snorted the pepper. A second later, she let go with an explosive sneeze.

Religion played a part in many people’s lives and the largest sect was Snotism. Snotists worshiped Gundar, the god who created the universe with a might sneeze after snorting His favorite recreational drug. Spittle flew through empty space and solidified into suns, planets and comets.

He tips his cap forward over his face and inhales deeply of the moist air. It seems to Harlan that he can smell the whole of these mountains’ lives in that single breath. The gentle notes of wild herbs and grasses, of seedlings introducing themselves to the world. Also the thick and bittersweet must of leaf litter, felled trees, and decaying animals returning to the soil.

Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist?

The following is intended to be a fun, comedic sci-fi/fantasy novel. Any similarity between the events described and how reality actually works is purely coincidental.

While we read a novel, we are insane - bonkers.

The bag also held an umbrella made of iron and cloth. In effect, the umbrella was a lightning rod. Whenever it rained, Remy’s job was to hold the umbrella over Jerado’s head. So far, Remy had been struck by lightning three times, while Jerado, protected by a spell, remained safe.

The anti-aging spell he used every month kept him alive for the most part. Facially, he looked like a forty-five year old; physically, he was a wreck because the spell was defective. All his teeth had fallen out years ago and he now used a set of ill-fitting wooden dentures. He was bald and wore a cheap reddish-blonde wig that often slipped if he turned his head suddenly. It also had a tendency to take flight in a breeze. His knees were creaky and often ached, and his eyesight had deteriorated.

James Heron stepped from the personal transport as Herbert, the family’s outmoded android butler, opened the front door of Scrabo Farm. There were infinitely more efficient and newer model android servants available, but neither James Heron nor his sister Niamh L’Estrange would dream of scrapping the mechanical attendant that had served the family so well, and enlivened their childhood with its fussy care of them both. “Hello, Herbert, is my sister home?” Answering in the slightly mechanical voice that James had liked so much when he was a boy, Herbert said, “She is in her study, Captain. I have alerted her to your arrival.

One day, Remy came across a proposal from Lithgow for a budget increase to re-equip an archer company with newly invented crossbows. Remy modified the requested budget amount by adding two zeroes to it and sent the proposal into Jerado for approval. The sounds of Jerado’s wooden dentures clattering across the desk was most satisfying to Remy. Soon after, Jerado sent Lithgow a strongly worded notice to leave the archers alone.

The Running Man is a sci-fi action story based on a novel by Stephen King, built around a nightmare vision of America in 2017—thirty years from when we were shooting. The economy is in a depression, and the United States has become a fascist state where the government uses TV and giant screens in the neighborhoods to distract people from the fact that nobody has a job.

Remy took a chair across from Jerado. A chess board and pieces sat in between them. “Are you sure you remember the moves?” Jerado looked forward to recouping his card game losses. “Y ..es. I . . . I practiced the moves in my office. I . . . I also read a scroll on playing the game.” “Then you won’t object to betting on the outcome of the game?” “N . . . o. H . . . ow much?” “Let’s bet a modest sum. Say, twenty-five silver?” Jerado pushed a stack of silver pennies into the middle. “A . . . ll right.” Remy pushed a similar stack forward. “I’’ll let you have the first move,” Jerado said. Remy moved a pawn forward to start the game. Five moves later, Remy said, “C . . . heckmate,” and scooped up the silver coins. Jerado sat stunned for a few moments. “Rematch.” After Remy won four more games — the last for seven gold pennies — Jerado said through clenched teeth, “That’s enough for tonight, Remy. I’m tired.

In the years that followed, Tsula would find that she could not recall that walk to the edge or the thrust of her legs into the air. Her clearest memory more than twenty years later is of the long, breathless wait as she fell, seemingly forever, and the water swallowing her at last. When she burst from its surface, unhurt, her mind noisy and electric, she grabbed for Jamie and kissed him hard.

In many ways sci-fi is a natural progression from the magical worlds we inhabited as children. Speculative fiction opens up parallel universes to which we can escape and exercise our love for all things beyond our ken. close off these speculative worlds at your peril.

Two Dutch, two Americans, one German and one Australian. And yet, as the rocket began to quake beneath us, my mind focused on a man in Antarctica. I thought about Sam "Snowbow" Archambeau waiting for the September sunrise to reach the South Pole. I smiled recalling him getting a haircut in a lawn chair next to the frozen barbershop pole." -- Nikki in the upcoming novel, "Nikki White: Polar Extremes" (Nikki, #3)

The Troll Patrol was an institution unique to Dun Hythe. Long ago, the city leaders had recognized the need to control and direct the heavy wagon traffic that flowed to and from the port area. They organized a patrol of citizens for this purpose and all went well for a while. No one knows who allowed the first troll to join up, but word immediately spread throughout the troll community that one of their number had a paying job with unlimited donuts. Soon after that, every opening in the patrol attracted dozens of trolls who brazenly persuaded non-trolls to withdraw their applications. Within a few years, trolls had taken over the organization. Trolls proved to be particularly inept at traffic control. A member of the Troll Patrol could station himself in the middle of a deserted intersection and, within minutes, he would create a traffic-snarling mess. To keep the enraged wagon drivers under control, the trolls relied upon truncheons. A whack or two in the head always knocked a driver groggy and made him a lot less noisy.

The internet. Can we trust in that? Of course not. Give it six months and we'll probably discover Google's sewn together by orphans in sweatshops. Or that Wi-Fi does something horrible to your brain, like eating your fondest memories and replacing them with drawings of cross-eyed bats and a strong smell of puke. There's surely a great dystopian sci-fi novel yet to be written about a world in which it's suddenly discovered that wireless broadband signals deaden the human brain, slowly robbing us of all emotion, until after 10 years of exposure we're all either rutting in stairwells or listlessly reversing our cars over our own offspring with nary the merest glimmer of sympathy or pain on our faces. It'll be set in Basingstoke and called, "Cuh, Typical.

It's hard. Being 15, 16, 17. You get so angry. You want to do something with that anger. I guess try to find some other way to let it out. Don't kill people. Don't kill yourself. Let yourself grow up a little. Then you might start to think differently about things. You might get new opportunities to do something with your life that you never thought possible as a teenager." -- Thomas Harvey from the upcoming novel, "Nikki White: Polar Extremes" (Nikki, #3)

Hopis have lived in America longer than anyone. We wanted to explore the concept of Earthly visitation through the eyes of people who have also witnessed the rapid evolution of modern culture. For us, their beliefs ring true on so many levels. Hopi prophecy speaks to the destiny of man...in a universe where we are not alone.

I don’t know why I told you all those things, but I did. Maybe it was because I’m a drunk, and sometimes drunks like to confess.

And so the result of several years of Everybody Shareskyism, other than slaughtering people, is for everybody to stand around and stare blankly at each other.

Halliday’s favorite sci-fi novels, TV shows, and movies.

A bullet is worth a thousand threats. And I shot two.

If you have a dream in this world, you should try to achieve it. There is no guarantee you will succeed, but you will already have failed if you don't even try.

An assembly of idiots, a congress of madmen, a club of maniacs, would not have been more tumultuous.

One great use of learning,” said Count Timascheff with a smile, “is to make us know our own ignorance

They did to others what they would not have others do to them, an immoral principle upon which the whole art of war is based.

The man who dies," added Van Tricasse solemnly, "without ever having decided upon anything during his life, has very nearly attained to perfection.

He was one of those original beings whom the Creator invents in a moment of fantasy, and of whom He immediately breaks the cast.

Bother you engineers! you are good for nothing but to discover difficulties.” “And to surmount them when not insurmountable,” replied Banks quietly.

that class which takes for gospel everything stated by authority,

The same reason as every revolt throughout history,” he had implored her. “To take back what is ours from the landowning class! For the many to free themselves from the tyranny of the few!

Lastly there was the superstitious class of ignoramuses to be dealt with; these are not content with being ignorant; they know what does not exist, and about the moon they know a great deal.

Jerado heard a splash followed by the roar of an explosion. Bits of equipment, glass and wood splattered against the back of the chair. A large chunk of table whizzed past his head and smashed into the cave’s wall. Ears ringing, Jerado sighed and waited for what he knew would happen next. “M . . . master?” “Yes, Remy?” “C. . . Can you sew my hand back on my wrist?” “Remy, Remy, Remy. You know how I hate doing mundane chores.” “B . . . but I can’t clean up the mess with only one hand.” “That is true. All right, fetch a needle and thread and I’ll repair your hand.” “A . . . And I need a new tunic. This one is in tatter

they are ingenious men. Those three carry with them into space all the resources of art, science, and industry. With those everything can be accomplished, and you will see that they will get out of the difficulty.

They’re into a bit more than assassination,” said the Admiral, aka Mr Brown, “and not all of them are top agents—the ones that use the names of gods and goddesses to identify themselves. Some are called daemons, and they serve as apprentices to the top players. They’ve a large number of people in the mix. Same arrangement. A team of professional killers, safe crackers, explosives—you name it —round each one, and they’re not afraid to sacrifice members for the objective, or to protect the goddess or god heading it. Every time we get close to them we lose people. It’s as if they’re playing with us. We’re pretty sure they’re all very well connected, and some of them indulge in what they call ‘hunting’. Some poor bastard is abducted and dumped somewhere remote without the means to defend himself. Then he or she is hunted by one or more of the Pantheon. They’re psychopaths—but, as I said, they’re very well connected.

But what can’t be done, is that our life should be given back to us a couple of hundred years hence to enable us to see all these marvels! Life is not all sunshine, but yet I would willingly consent to live ten centuries out of pure curiosity!

It's said that the Fremen scum drink the blood of their dead. Not the blood, sir. But all of a man's water ultimately, belongs to his people - to his tribe./ The human body is composed of some seventy percent water by weight./ A dead man, surely, no longer REQUIRES that water.

You know the classic lines you get in sci-fi? Whatever it is, it’s coming our way, or Get me the President on the line? Well, there’s always the one about the enemy being superior, though by the end of the story you mostly feel cheated. This time you won’t. The yrr are superior.

This astonishing man lived in a perpetual disposition to hyperbole, and had not yet passed the age of superlatives; objects depicted themselves on the retina of his eye with exaggerated dimensions; from thence an association of gigantic ideas; he saw everything on a large scale except difficulties and men.

I see sarcastic and obscene visions of angels and demons flirting with the souls of men creating horror and deities in surreal worlds, and writing plays for us to perform; while I am being dragged into the darkness. I want to know who is doing all this… I fell back into that lethargic dream of bottomless pits and deserts hanging from the skies.

Mulut manusia itu persis seperti genre novel, ada fiksi, biografi (pencitraan), terkadang horor, drama (terlalu dilebih-lebihkan), kerjaannya ngerayu sok romance, kayak fabel yang tiap ngumpul ngomongin burung melulu, gak pernah serius kayak comedy atau gak nyambung seabstrak fiction sci-fi, ada magic yang ngomongnya diada-adain padahal enggak ada, tapi juga ada yang true story.

A história de todas as grandes civilizações galácticas tende a passar por três fases distintas e identificáveis: a da Sobrevivência, a da Interrogação e a da Sofisticação, também conhecidas pelas fases Como, Porquê e Onde. Por exemplo, a primeira fase é caracterizada pela pergunta "Como vamos comer?", a segunda pela pergunta "Por que comemos?" e a terceira pela pergunta "Onde vamos almoçar?".

. The settlers, having become potters, made nothing but pottery. When it suited Cyrus Harding to change them into smiths, they would become smiths. But the next day being Sunday, and also Easter Sunday, all agreed to sanctify the day by rest. These Americans were religious men, scrupulous observers of the precepts of the Bible, and their situation could not but develop sentiments of confidence towards the Author of all things.

It's hard. Being 15, 16, 17. You get so angry. You want to do something with that anger. I guess try to find some other way to let it out. Don't kill people. Don't kill yourself. Let yourself grow up a little. Then you might to start to think differently about things. You might get new opportunities to do something with your life that you never thought possible as a teenager." -- Thomas Harvey in the upcoming novel, "Nikki White: Polar Extremes" (Nikki, #3)

All those years of lurid magazine covers showing extremely nubile females being menaced in three distinct colors by assorted monstrosities; those horror movies, those invasion-from-outer-space novels, those Sunday supplement fright splashes—all those sturdy psychological ruts I had to re-track. Not to mention the shudders elicited by mention of 'worms,' the regulation distrust of even human "furriners,” the superstitious dread of creatures who had no visible place to park a soul. ("Betelgeuse Bridge)

Will insisted in interviews—not that I’d read any of them. Well, all right, I might have skimmed one or two—that his books were tragic love stories. But not romance novels. Oh, no. Definitely not that! Because he was a man, and most male authors of adult books would slit their own throats before admitting they’d written a romance or women’s fiction or even a family drama. Everything they wrote, many of them insisted, was literary fiction (unless of course it was sci-fi, horror, or mystery). So nauseating.

First Nations and science fiction don't usually go together. In fact, they could be considered rather unusual topics to mention in the same sentence, much like fish and bicycles.... To me, sci-fi was a world of possibilities. As a fan of writing, why shouldn't my fascination extend to such unconventional works? It was still writing, still literature in all its glory, but here they used different tools to explore the human condition, be they aliens, advanced technology, or other such novel approaches.... I wanted to take traditional (a buzzword in the Native community) science-fiction characteristics and filter them through an Aboriginal consciousness.

The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind,” he said in that dry factual tone, and everyone stared at him amazed. “Without the human presence it is just a collection of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It’s we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That’s what makes Mars beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides

The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind. without the human presence it is just a concatenation of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It's we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That's what makes Mars Beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides. Now that we are here, it isn't enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That's science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation. The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It's too dangerous to keep the consciousness of the universe on only one planet, it could be wiped out. And so now we're on two, three if you count the moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won't destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won't go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars beauty? I don't think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different from Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind; if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and the universe both. We can do it, so we will do it. So, we might as well start.

Wallace had read the Tractatus, of course (he wrote to Lance Olsen that he thought its first sentence was "the most beautiful opening line in western lit"). He knew that Wittgenstein's book presented a spare and unforgiving picture of the relations among logic, language, and the physical world. He knew that the puzzles solved and raised by the book were influential, debatable, and rich in their implications. But as a flesh-and-blood reader with human feelings, he also knew, though he had never articulated it out loud, that as you labored to understand the Tractatus, its cold, formal, logical picture of the world cold make you feel strange, lonely, awestruck, lost, frightened-a range of moods not unlike those undergone by Kate herself. The similarities were not accidental. Markson's novel, as Wallace put it, was like a 240-page answer to the question, "What if somebody really had to live in a Tractatusized world?" Pronouncing the novel "a kind of philosophical sci-fi," Wallace explained that Markson had staged a human drama on an alien intellectual planet, and in so doing he had "fleshed the abstract sketches of Wittgenstein's doctrine into the concrete theater of human loneliness.