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Grex > Books > #96: That Gosh Darn Mysterious Quote Item | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 98 responses total. |
remmers
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response 59 of 98:
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Jan 18 15:44 UTC 2001 |
I think Scott might have it.
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rcurl
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response 60 of 98:
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Jan 18 16:24 UTC 2001 |
Now, if it had been the passage by Muir of climbing a tree to better
enjoy a thunderstorm....
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gjharb
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response 61 of 98:
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Jan 18 20:40 UTC 2001 |
John Muir it is. Scott's up. All quotes were taken from A Thousand
Mile Walk to the Gulf. The book records Muir's trek in 1867 from
Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida
to the Gulf Coast. He was 29 yrs. old at the time.
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mcnally
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response 62 of 98:
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Jan 18 23:10 UTC 2001 |
Hmmm.. I'd considered John Muir but not guessed him because of the
apparent setting of the passages you chose..
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scott
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response 63 of 98:
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Jan 19 02:21 UTC 2001 |
OK, here we go:
"Where te start? With a death sentence, perhaps. But whose--my death
sentence or hers? And if mine, which of mine? There are several from which
to choose. Perhaps this final one is appropriate. Begin at the ending.
I am writing this in a Schrodinger cat box in high orbit around the
quarantined world of Armaghast. The cat box is not much of a box, more of
a smooth-hulled ovoid a mere six meters by three meters. It will be my entire
world until the end of my life. Most of the interior of my world is a spartan
cell cosisting of a black-box air-and-waste recycler, my bunk, the
food-synthesizer unit, anarrow counter that serves as both my dining table
and writing desk, and finally the toilet, sink, and shower, which are set
behind a fiberplastic partition for reasons of propriety that escape me. No
one will ever visit me here. Privacy seems a hollow joke."
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goose
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response 64 of 98:
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Jan 19 04:13 UTC 2001 |
PK Dick?
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jep
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response 65 of 98:
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Jan 19 14:22 UTC 2001 |
Dan Simmons.
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scott
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response 66 of 98:
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Jan 19 15:14 UTC 2001 |
Jep is correct. It's from "Endymion", BTW. Should have been quite obvious
to anyone who's read that serious.
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janc
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response 67 of 98:
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Jan 20 05:17 UTC 2001 |
Was to me.
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jep
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response 68 of 98:
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Jan 24 16:28 UTC 2001 |
Sorry about being slow about posting a new quote. Here it is:
Came today [it read] a blob from Thuban VI. There is no other way in
which one might describe it. It is simply a mass of matter, presumably
of flesh, and this mass seems to go through some sort of rhythmic change
in shape, for periodically it is globular, then begins to flatten out
until it lies in the bottom of the tank, somewhat like a pancake. Then
it begins to contract and to pull in on itself, until finally it is a
ball again. This change is rather slow and definitely rhythmic, but
only in the sense that it follows the same pattern. It seems to have no
relation to time. I tried timing it and could detect no time pattern.
The shortest period needed to complete the cycle was seven minutes and
the longest was eighteen. Perhaps over a longer period one might be
able to detect a time pattern, but I didn't have the time. The semantic
translator did not work with it, but it did emit for me a series of
sharp clicks, as if it might be clicking claws together, although it had
no claws that I could see. When I looked this up in the pasimology
manual I learned that what it was trying to say was that it was all
right, that it needed no attention, and please leave it alone. Which I
did thereafter.
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aruba
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response 69 of 98:
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Jan 24 16:45 UTC 2001 |
Hmmm. I'll guess Ursula LeGuin.
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jep
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response 70 of 98:
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Jan 24 17:11 UTC 2001 |
Nope.
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aruba
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response 71 of 98:
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Jan 25 04:06 UTC 2001 |
This sounds really familiar to me. I don't think it's Heinlein, but since
jep and I are both Heinlein fans, I'll guess him.
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janc
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response 72 of 98:
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Jan 25 04:46 UTC 2001 |
Unfamiliar to me too. I'll guess James White, because he does this kind of
thing, and I haven't read that much of his work.
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jep
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response 73 of 98:
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Jan 25 17:57 UTC 2001 |
Not Heinlein or James White. The book should be familiar to any long
time science fiction fan. My reprinted copy, which I bought used, has a
"True" cigarette ad in the middle.
Here's another excerpt from the same book:
They were, I gathered, a sexual unit, the five of them, although I am
not certain I understand, for it is most confusing. They were happy and
friendly and they carried with them an air of faint amusement, not at
anything in particular, but at the universe itself, as if they might
have enjoyed some sort of cosmic and very private joke that was known to
no one else. They were on a holiday and were en route to a festival
(although that might not be the precise word for it) on another planet,
where other life forms were gathering for a week of carnival. Just how
they had been invited or why they had been invited I was unable to
determine. It must surely have been a great honor for them to be going
there, but so far as I could see they did not seem to think so, but took
it as their right. They were very happy and without a care and
extremely self-assured and poised, but thinking back on it, I would
suppose that they are always that way. I found myself just a little
envious at not being able to be as carefree and gay as they were, and
trying to imagine how fresh life and the universe must seem to them, and
a little resentful that they could be, so unthinkingly, as happy as they
were.
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md
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response 74 of 98:
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Jan 25 21:49 UTC 2001 |
The style doesn't tell me anything, but I'm not much of an SF fan. Is
it A. E. van Vogt?
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mcnally
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response 75 of 98:
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Jan 25 22:18 UTC 2001 |
It sounds familiar to me, too, but I can't quite place it.. Hmmmm..
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aruba
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response 76 of 98:
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Jan 26 05:49 UTC 2001 |
Ah, OK. I believe that's from "Way Station" by Clifford D. Simak?
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janc
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response 77 of 98:
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Jan 26 06:16 UTC 2001 |
Mark has it, I think.
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jep
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response 78 of 98:
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Jan 26 18:09 UTC 2001 |
I think he does, too. Right you are, Mark! You're up next.
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aruba
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response 79 of 98:
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Jan 26 23:36 UTC 2001 |
I just thought of that book the other day for some reason. I'll come up
with a quote soon.
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gelinas
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response 80 of 98:
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Feb 21 21:38 UTC 2001 |
Soon?
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aruba
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response 81 of 98:
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Feb 23 20:17 UTC 2001 |
Sorry - I have been tied up. Here's a quote:
She led the way across the street to a big white frame house which sat well
back from the road. We went around the house to the back, past a little
sunken stone-walled garden, and through a hedge to a small barn that was
used for a garage. Beside this sat a little portable wire pen. Attached to
one end of the pen was a tiny wooden house with a tarpaper roof. Only one
rabbit was in sight. It was out in the pen, nibbling away at part of a
carrot.
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janc
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response 82 of 98:
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Feb 24 21:59 UTC 2001 |
James Herriot?
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aruba
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response 83 of 98:
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Feb 25 02:53 UTC 2001 |
Not James Herriot.
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