It's yet another "Mystery Quote" item, just in time for Spring Agora.
 The name of the game is "Guess the Famous Author" and the rules are
 simple:  the last correct guesser enters a quote from a work of prose,
 poetry, fiction, or non-fiction (pretty wide-open, eh?) and anyone who
 wishes may attempt to guess the identity of the author based on clues
 gleaned from the passage.  The reward for a correct guess is the
 privilege of posting the next quote..

 If the quote proves to be too obscure, the poster is encouraged to
 provide minor clues or an additional passage from the work of the same
 writer until someone manages a correct guess.

222 responses total.

 <book cf fairwitnesses, please link to books..>

Picking up where we left off in the Winter Agora conference, this was
the last quote (provided by yours truly..)

 -    "Well, Master Cap, is it not a beautiful sheet, and fit to
 -    be named a sea?"
 - 
 -    "This, then, is what you call your lake?" demanded Cap, 
 -    sweeping the northern horizon with his pipe.  "I say, is this,
 -    really, your lake?"
 - 
 -    "Sartain, and if the judgment of one who has lived on the
 -    shores of many others can be taken, a very good lake it is."
 - 
 -    "Just as I expected!  A pond in dimensions, and a scuttle-butt
 -    in taste.  It is all in vain to travel inland, in the hope of 
 -    seeing anything either full-grown or useful.  I knew it would
 -    turn out in just this way."
 - 
 -    "What is the matter with Ontario, Master Cap?  It is large, and
 -    fair to look at, and pleasant enough to drink, for those who
 -    can't get at the water of the springs."
 - 
 -    "Do you call this large?" asked Cap, again sweeping the air with
 -    the pipe.  "I will just ask you what there is large about it. 
 -    Didn't Jasper himself confess that it was only some twenty leagues
 -    from shore to shore?"
 - 
 -    "But uncle," interposed Mabel, "no land is to be seen, except
 -    here on our own coast.  To me it looks exactly like the ocean."
 - 
 -    "This bit of a pond look like the ocean!  Well, Magnet, that
 -    from a girl who has had real seamen in her family is downright
 -    nonsense.  What is there about it, pray, that has even the
 -    outline of a sea on it?"
 - 
 -    "Why, there is water -- water -- water; nothing but water for
 -    miles on miles, far as the eye can see."

 Guessed so far (all incorrect, of course..)

         Mark Twain
         Pierre Marquette
         Finley Peter Dunne

 Since we aren't getting many guessers and guessing seems to have stalled,
 I'll add more info in just a bit..

Fenimore Cooper?

Jack London?

it sounds like Cooper, but then I"m unfavourably biased..

  It is indeed, James Fenimore Cooper, from the novel "The Pathfinder",
  one of his Leatherstocking Tales (of which the most famous, "The Last
  of the Mohicans", is undoubtedly familiar to most Grexers..)

  MD's up..

Here's my quote:

    "'Eventually, computers and robots will run things.  Humans 
will manage those machines, but that doesn't require courage or 
strength, or any characteristics like those.  In fact, men are 
outliving their usefulness.  All you need are sperm banks to keep 
the species going, and those are coming along now.  Most men are 
rotten lovers, women say, so there's not much loss in replacing 
sex with science.
    'We're giving up free range, getting organized, feathering our 
emotions.  Efficiency and effectiveness and all those other pieces 
of intellectual artifice.  And with the loss of free range, the 
cowboy disappears, along with the mountain lion and gray wolf.  
There's not much room left for travelers.
    'I'm one of the last cowboys.  My job gives me free range of a 
sort.  As much as you can find nowadays.  I'm not sad about it.  
Maybe a little wistful, I guess.  But it's got to happen, it's 
the only way we'll keep from destroying ourselves.  My contention 
is that male hormones are the ultimate cause of trouble on this 
planet.'"

Gary Snyder?

Oh hell, I've read that.  Is it Jack Chalker?

  unlikely..

  it seems quite familiar to me, too, though I can't conclude whether
  it's actually something I've read or just *seems* like something I've
  read..

Not Gary Snyder.  Not Jack Chalker.  (Who's he, btw?)

Jack Chalker is a scifi writer.

Since I don't have much of an idea who this is, I'll make a *really*
wild guess: Arthur Miller.

How about John Perry Barlow?

Brian Aldiss?

I guessed Arthur Miller, by the way, because the sentiment
expressed in the quote has a lot in common with the way the
Clark Gable character views things in Miller's and John
Huston's film "The Misfits". But the specifics in the
quote don't seem all that Millerish, though, and "free-
range" wasn't a buzzword back in 1960 when the film was
made, so I don't hold out much hope that I'm right.

        Arthur C. Clarke?

Barry Longyear?

  my guess is that people are on the wrong track with all of the
  sf-oriented guesses but I can't put my finger on why..

Orson Scott Card?

Wrong, all wrong.  Here's another quote:


In Dimension Z, there are strange moments.  Coming 
around a long, rainy, New Mexico curve west of Magdalena,
the highway turns to a footpath, and the path to an animal 
trail.  A pass of my wiper blades, and the trail become a 
forest place where nothing has ever gone.  Again the wiper 
blades and, again, something further back.  Great ice, this 
time.  I am moving through short grass, in furs, with matted 
hair and spear, thin and hard as the ice itself, all muscle 
and implacable cunning.  Past the ice, still further back 
along the measure of things, deep salt water in which I 
swim, gilled and scaled.  I cannot see more than that, 
except beyond plankton is the digit zero.

Zalazny?

Nope.

Loren Eisley?

That last one *does* sound like Eisley.

Not Eisley.  The quotes are from a novel.

I've never actually read this novel (even though it's only 171 small
pages) so I don't know what a "give-away" quote might be.  I'm just
selecting passages at random from it.  Here's another one:


He took out the Nikon loaded with Kodachrome and screwed
it onto the heavy tripod.  The camera had the 24-millimeter
lens on it, and he replaced that with his favorite 105-millimeter.
Gray light in the east now, and he began to experiment with
his composition.  Move tripod two feet left, readjust legs
sticking in muddy ground by the stream.  He kept the camera
strap wound over his left wrist, a practice he always
followed when working around water.  He'd seen too many
cameras go into the water when tripods tipped over.

Red color coming up, sky brightening.  Lower camera six 
inches, adjust tripod legs.  Still not there.  A foot more
to the left.  Adjust legs again.  Level camera on tripod
head.  Set lens to f/8.  Estimate depth of field, maximize
it via hyperfocal technique.  Screw in cable release on
shutter button.  Sun 40 percent above the horizon, old
paint on the bridge turning a warm red, just what he wanted.

Vonnegut?  I don't really think so.

Dean Koontz?

Not Vonnegut, not Koontz.  This book was a monster best-seller,
like on the NYT list for two years or something.  Huge.
They made a movie out of it and everything.

I'm ashamed to state I've read this book.  All 171 pages
of it.  

Got one!  [md reels in his first catch of the item]

Robert James Waller, _The Bridges of Madison County_.

 (I'd figured it out but I was *not* going to be the one to guess it..)
 (Besides, I've used up all of my quote material for the time being..)

 It's shameless with the mention of Nikon and Kodachrome. Almost as bad as
Stephen King.

Ack. Indeed, I am ashamed to say I read it too.

Dr Remmers seems to have guessed it.  He knows whether or not he 
should pass to his wife on this one.  May his conscience be his
guide.

Dr. Remmers' conscience is out for a walk (with Dr. Remmers)
so Ms. Remmers will jump right in with an easy one that
fits her agenda nicely.

________


     The man on television, Sunday midday, middle-aged and solid,
nice-looking chap, all the facts at his fingertips, more dependable
looking than most high-school principals, is talking about civilian
defense, his responsibility in Washington.  It can make an enormous
difference, he is saying.  Instead of the outright death of eighty million
American citizens in twenty minutes, he says, we can, by careful planning
and practice, get that number down to only forty milliion, maybe twenty. 
The thing to do, he says, is to evacuate the cities quickly and have
everyone get under shelter in the countryside.  That say we can recover,
and meanwhile we will have retaliated, incinerating all of Soviet
society, he says.  What about radioactive fallout? he asked.  Well, he
says.  Anyway, he says, if the Russians know they can only destroy forty
million of us instead of eighty million, this will deter them.  Of course,
he adds, they have the capacity to kill all two hundred and twenty million
of us if they were to try real hard, but they know we can do the same to
them.  If the figure is only forty million this will deter them, not worth
the trouble, not worth the risk.  Eighty million would be another matter,
we should guard ourselves against losing that many all at once, he says. 

     If I were sixteen or seventeen years old and had to listen to that,
or read things like that, I would want to give up listening and reading. 
I would begin thinking up new kinds of sounds, different from any music
heart before, and I would be twisting and turning to rid myself of human
language.

_______________

Neat quote.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss