"Barrett does not accept responsibility for his
actions. He hides behind his position in the
company, and his position in the company is all
he is. In the camp, there were many like him,
people who told themselves that they must do
terrible things to the prisoners because their
superiors demanded it, people who refused to
see that they were doing these things out of
fear and denial. Those people, they made
themselves monsters, and I think Barrett is
that kind of monster. He will commit murder
rather than risk doing something that might
endanger his status, and he will tell himself
it is for the good of the company."
Paul J. McAuley(1955-): The Passenger(2002), teoksessa Gardner Dozois(1947-)(toim.):The Mammoth Book of Best New
Science Fiction. 16 Annual Collection(2003), sivu 89.
tiistaina, kesäkuuta 29, 2004
maanantaina, kesäkuuta 07, 2004
Visionaries are apt to speak in strange tongues,
difficult to interpret; a striking common feature
of many - though mercifully not all - of the great
founding figures of planning is their incoherence.
Their primitive disciples, all too anxious to
undertake the task, may create a gospel at variance with the original texts... The cultural and social
world they inhabited, which provided the essential material for their perceptions, has long since
vanished and is difficult to reconstruct: the past is a foreign country, with a different language, different social mores, and a different view of the
human condition.
Peter Hall(1932-): Cities of Tomorrow. An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. Updated Edition(2001), sivu 4.
Peter Hall(1932-): Cities of Tomorrow. An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. Updated Edition(2001), sivu 4.
To spend millions of dollars to live suspended in
midair above fire-prone vegetation on soil with
only the most tenuous commintment to remaining in
place, all within a few dozen miles of the San
Andreas Fault, would seem to make no sense at all...
The sight of such a landscape each time you step out your front door is a reminder what it means to
be alive - even if that reminder ultimately kills you...
They presumably have at least some inkling of the
attendant dangers, though it is surprisingly easy to
forget the quakes and the fires and the mud while
gazing out on the intoxicating blue of the Pacific.
Why do they do it? They put themselves and their
families at risk for the simple reason that they
want to be close to nature.
William Cronon(1954-)(ed.):Uncommon Ground. Rethinking the Human Place in Nature(1996), sivut 31-32.
William Cronon(1954-)(ed.):Uncommon Ground. Rethinking the Human Place in Nature(1996), sivut 31-32.
During [proto mass culture], taste was heavily
determined by means of finite resources, whereas
the ethos of possession in [mass culture] made
it commonplace to own more than one actually
needed as well as more than one could afford.
Michael Kammen(1936-): American Culture, American Tastes. Social Change and the 20th Century(1999), sivu 49.
Michael Kammen(1936-): American Culture, American Tastes. Social Change and the 20th Century(1999), sivu 49.
lauantaina, toukokuuta 22, 2004
tiistaina, toukokuuta 18, 2004
maanantaina, toukokuuta 17, 2004
Indeed, the attempt to foist upon people who
are supposedly living two hundred tears from
now the foibles, verbal habits and moral outlooks
of the present day is rather absurd. There
are no characters in fiction who seem more
ridiculous to us than the ones which writers
of the nineteenth century invented to populate
their visions of our times.
Brian Stableford(1948-):The Way to Write Science Fiction(1989), sivu 61.
Brian Stableford(1948-):The Way to Write Science Fiction(1989), sivu 61.
Knowing what someone is like is a matter of
knowing how they relate to their environment;
we can quickly get a sense of the particular
personality of a fictitious character if we
can observe his or her idiosyncratic response
to a situation which we already understand in
terms of norms and customs.
Brian Stableford(1948-): The Way to Write Science Fiction(1989, sivu 60.
Brian Stableford(1948-): The Way to Write Science Fiction(1989, sivu 60.
"The future is there," Cayce hears herself say,
"looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the
fiction we will have become. And from where they
are, the past behind us will look nothing at all
like the past we imagine behind us now... I only
know that the one constant in history is change:
The past changes. Our version of the past will
interest the future to about the extent we´re
interested in whatever past the Victorians believed
in. It simply won´t seem very relevant."
William Gibson(1948-): Pattern Recognition(2003), sivu 57.
William Gibson(1948-): Pattern Recognition(2003), sivu 57.
keskiviikkona, toukokuuta 12, 2004
tiistaina, toukokuuta 04, 2004
lauantaina, toukokuuta 01, 2004
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