here is the next set of quotes

painkiller64

Avoid A Void
I was transplanted to a dark planet where the first germs of creation were
struggling together. From a clay that was still soft rose gigantic palm trees,
poisonous euphorbias and acanthus twined about cactus—the arid forms
of rocks stuck out like skeletons from this sketch of creation, and hideous
reptiles squirmed, enlarged, or grew round in the midst of an inextricable
web of wild vegetation. The pale light of the stars alone illuminated the bluish
distances of this strange horizon; and yet, as the creations were formed,
a more luminous star gathered from them the germs of light.
—Gérard de Nerval, Aurelia (1854), translated by Richard Aldington (1932)

[On the Moon:] He sighed and looked about him. ‘‘This is no world for
men,’’ he said. ‘‘And yet in a way—it appeals.’’
—H. G.Wells, The First Men in the Moon (1901)

I perceived the moon no longer as a planet from which I most earnestly
desired the means of escape, but as a possible refuge for human destitution.
[. . .] ‘‘We must annex this moon,’’ I said. ‘‘There must be no shilly-shally.
This is part of theWhite Man’s Burthen.’’
—H. G.Wells, The First Men in the Moon (1901)

I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on
Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness.
—Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (1917)

You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and
dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the
fourth moon of Jupiter.
—H. P. Lovecraft, ‘‘Beyond the Wall of Sleep’’ (1919)

Other memories encroached, cold, fear-etched memories that reached for
him like taloned, withered claws.
Memories of alien lands acrawl with loathesomeness and venom. Strange
planets that were strange not because they were alien, but because of the
abysmal terror in the very souls of them. Memories of shambling things that
triumphed over pitiful peoples whose only crime was they could not fight
back.
—Clifford D. Simak, ‘‘Shadow of Life’’ (1943)

There they go, off to Mars, just for the ride, thinking that they will find a
planet like a seer’s crystal, in which to read a miraculous future.What they’ll
find, instead, is the somewhat shopworn image of themselves. Mars is a
mirror, not a crystal.
—Ray Bradbury, ‘‘A Few Notes on The Martian Chronicles’’ (1950)

[First words said on the Moon:] By the grace of God, and the name of the
United States of America, I take possession of this planet on behalf of, and
for the benefit of, all mankind.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Rip von Ronkel, and James O’Hanlon,
Destination Moon (film, 1950)

I knew what it was like to walk on alien soil.
—Leigh Brackett, ‘‘The Woman from Altair’’ (1951)

Alien worlds have alien rules, you either learn quickly or not at all.
—Michael Shaara, ‘‘The Holes’’ (1954)

It was a fresh young world, Hubert thought sadly; a virgin world, waiting
innocently for the first immigrants to despoil it; waiting, like a young and
tender girl, to be picked up on the stellar street and sold into galactic
prostitution.
—Robert F. Young, ‘‘Report on the Sexual Behavior on Arcturus X’’ (1954)

The Lord sure makes some beautiful worlds.
—Cyril Hume, Forbidden Planet (film, 1956)

Every world was a miracle, if your eyes were good enough.
—Chad Oliver, ‘‘NorthWind’’ (1956)

They were a vast historical panorama [of Mars], clockwise around the room.
A group of skin-clad savages squatting around a fire. Hunters with bows and
spears, carrying the carcass of an animal slightly like a pig. Nomads riding
long-legged, graceful mounts like hornless deer. Peasants sowing and reaping;
mud-walled hut villages, and cities; processions of priests and warriors;
battles with swords and bows, and with cannon and muskets; galleys, and
ships with sails, and ships without visible means of propulsion, and aircraft.
Changing costumes and weapons and machines and styles of architecture.
A richly fertile landscape, gradually merging into barren deserts and bushlands—
the time of the great planet-wide drought. The Canal Builders—
men with machines recognizable as steam-shovels and derricks, digging and
quarrying and driving across the empty plains with aquaducts [sic]. More
cities—seaports on the shrinking oceans; dwindling, half-deserted cities; an
abandoned city, with four tiny humanoid figures and a thing like a combatcar
in the middle of a brush-grown plaza, they and their vehicle dwarfed by
the huge lifeless buildings around them. [. . .]
‘‘Wonderful!’’ von Ohlmhorst was saying. ‘‘The entire history of this race.’’
—H. Beam Piper, ‘‘Omnilingual’’ (1957)

Poor old Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna with his
rot wide open like a kid who’d never viddied any such thing before, and he
said:
‘‘What’s on them, I wonder.What would be up there on things like that?’’
I nudged him hard, saying: ‘‘Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou
not on them. There’ll be life like down here most likely, with some getting
knifed and others doing the knifing.’’
—Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

He was at home on those alien worlds, without time, those worlds where
flowers copulate and the stars do battle in the heavens, falling at last to the
ground, bleeding, like so many split and shattered chalices, and the seas part
to reveal stairways leading down, and arms emerge from caverns, waving
torches that flame like liquid faces.
—Roger Zelazny, ‘‘He Who Shapes’’ (1965)

He awoke—and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought, what would it be like
to trudge among them? Great and greater yet; the dream grew as he became
fully conscious, the dream and the yearning.
—Philip K. Dick, ‘‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale’’ (1966)

The grass is always greener under an alien star.
—John DeCles, ‘‘Cruelty’’ (1970)

Blossoms opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steel-flowers rising blue
from the brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-menever
down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them on iridescent wings; a
crownbuck shook his horns and bugled.
—Poul Anderson, ‘‘The Queen of Air and Darkness’’ (1971)

Carry me back to Titan.
That’s where I want to be.
I want to repose
On the methane snows
At the edge of a frozen sea.
—Eleanor Arnason, ‘‘The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons’’ (1974)

Don’t you understand, this is the first time I’ve actually stood on the surface of another planet . . . a whole alien world . . . ! Pity it’s such a dump though.
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

We have labored to produce a planet which, taken as a whole, would obey
the Three Laws of Robotics. It does nothing to harm human beings, either
by commission or omission. It does what we want it to do, as long as we do
not ask it to harm human beings. And it protects itself, except at times and in
places where it must serve us or save us even at the price of harm to itself.
—Isaac Asimov, The Robots of Dawn (1983)

We all want different things from Mars.
—Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)
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page 13 ambition and hope next to copy........
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Mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be selfcontented
is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be
blindly and impotently happy.
—Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)

Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should
we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never wanted
to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees
to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that,
people call you crazy.Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what
eternity is, for example, I wouldn’t care if they did think I was crazy.
—Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh, Frankenstein (film, 1931)

The humans have a curious force they call ambition. It drives them, and,
through them, it drives us. This force which keeps them active, we lack.
Perhaps, in time, we machines will acquire it.
—JohnWyndham, ‘‘The Lost Machine’’ (1932)

It was better to live with disappointment and frustration than to live without
hope.
—Robert A. Heinlein, ‘‘Waldo’’ (1942)

There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a longdesired
goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped
toward new ends.
—Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars (1956)

He never gave up his search for the Door into Summer.
—Robert A. Heinlein, The Door into Summer (1956)

Hope clouds observation.
—Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all,
as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.
—Theodore Sturgeon, ‘‘Amok Time,’’ episode of Star Trek (1967)

Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

How strange human nature is: confronted with a ladder, man feels compelled
to climb to the very top. It’s cold and drafty up there—bad for the health—
and a fall can be fatal. The rungs are slippery. It’s a funny thing: you’re aware
of the dangers, and you’re practically ready to drop from exhaustion, yet you
keep fighting your way up. Regardless of the situation, you keep climbing;
contrary to advice, you keep climbing; despite the resistance of your enemies,
you keep climbing; against your better instincts, your common sense, your
premonitions, you climb, climb, climb. If you don’t keep climbing, you fall to
the bottom. That’s for sure. But if you do keep climbing, you fall anyway.
—Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, Prisoners of Power (1969),
translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson (1977)

All her life she had made her own mistakes and her own successes, both
usually by trying what others said she could not do.
—Vonda N. McIntyre, ‘‘Aztecs’’ (1977)

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of
the heart.
—Tanith Lee, ‘‘Medra’’ (1984)

Your dream is a good one. [. . .] The desire that is the very root of life itself:
To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control.
It’s the desire for greatness.
—Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead (1986)

There is that within a man that drives him ever onwards, just as the power of
the seasons drives the roots of flowers into the hard earth; and so he decided,
against his better judgment, to open his eyes and find out what was going to
happen to him next.
—Tom Holt, Ye Gods! (1992)

‘‘He has been positively growing tusks trying to create a breed of human
insect which will continue to live on this accursed planet.’’
‘‘Everyone needs a goal.’’
—Steve Aylett, Atom (2000)
 
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