Quote of the day...done a different way now.

painkiller64

Avoid A Void
from today on i will post by category instead of by single numbers. instead of having alot of single tiny post building up on the coolscifi servers just a few big ones and you get to read more of them this way. enjoy.

Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by
humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades
of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life
forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their
way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where
they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid life-style, responding
to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint
equivalent of the good life.
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)


Why is any object we don’t understand always called a ‘‘thing’’?
—Harold Livingston, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (film, 1979)


‘‘The aliens,’’ Dominguez said, frowning at Paul, ‘‘are still a mystery to us.
We exchange facts, descriptions, recipes for tools, but the important questions
do not lend themselves to our clumsy mathematical codes. Do they
know of love? Do they appreciate beauty? Do they believe in God, hey?’’
‘‘Do they want to eat us?’’ Paul threw in.
—Michael Swanwick, ‘‘Ginungagap’’ (1980)


There was a fear of the non-human intelligence of the Birleles, even a fear
of their strange shadowed beauty. Not everyone was attracted by the alien.
Many were frightened and repelled by it.
—Sydney J. Van Scyoc, ‘‘Bluewater Dreams’’ (1981)


Why does he have to come here, with his birdcalls and his politeness? Why
can’t they all go someplace else besides here? There must be lots of other
places they can go, out of all them bright stars up there behind the clouds.
—Nancy Kress, ‘‘Out of All Them Bright Stars’’ (1985)


For a moment, she saw Nikanj as she had once seen Jdahya—as a totally alien
being, grotesque, repellant beyond mere ugliness with its night crawler body
tentacles, its snake head tentacles, and its tendency to keep both moving,
signaling attention and emotion. [. . .] She stared at it for a moment longer,
wondering how she had lost her horror of such a being.
Then she lay down, perversely eager for what it could give her.
—Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (1987)


All aliens are just personifications of our neuroses, physical manifestations of
what we fear or desire.
—Alexander Jablokov, ‘‘The Place of No Shadows’’ (1990)


The Borg: Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.We wish to improve
ourselves.We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to
our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.
—Michael Piller, ‘‘The Best of BothWorlds’’ Part 1, episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1990)


Suddenly, without warning, the Other reaches out and seizes Carvalho’s right
hand in his own.
And shakes it.
Which in reaction sets Earthman and Other, still enthusiastically shaking
one another’s hand, to turning lazy, laughing cartwheels among the stars.
—James Stevens-Arce, ‘‘Oscar Carvalho, Spacial’’ (1990)


The figures the telescope was producing were all that was left of an exploding
star twenty million years ago. A billion small rubbery things on two planets
who had been getting on with life in a quiet sort of way had been totally
destroyed, but they were certainly helping Adrian get his Ph.D. and, who
knows, they might have thought it all worthwhile if anyone had asked them.
—Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead (1993)


Do not attempt to judge an extraterrestrial race or its artifacts on the basis of
human experience.
—Christopher Anvil, ‘‘A Question of Identity’’ (1995)


There are beings in the universe billions of years older than either of our
races. Once, long ago, they walked among the stars like giants, vast, timeless.
Taught the younger races, explored beyond the rim, created great empires,
but to all things, there is an end. Solely, over a million years, First Ones
went away. Some passed beyond the stars never to return. Some simply
disappeared.
—J. Michael Straczynski, ‘‘In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum,’’ episode of
Babylon 5 (1995)


The thing about aliens is, they’re alien.
—Gregory Benford, ‘‘A Hunger for the Infinite’’ (1999)
 
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