More quotes

1. "Mr Prancebody became excited and was somewhat eponymously ejected by the police." -- Watership Down, Richard Adams

2. "Review that made my head go all desky:" -- twilightsrain

3. “A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a writer, you are expected to know the difference.” -- ???

4. "Things I know are dumb but do anyway? My girlfriend." -- NoClueBoy (paraphrased)

5. "Hello. I am not going to answer this phone, ever. It is switched off, it always has been switched off, and it always will be switched off unless I'm calling emergency services. If, when doing so, I find messages on my phone, I will delete them. If you want me to get back to you today, email me. If you want me to get back to you in a few days, leave a message on the home phone. Byeeeeeee." -- Paraphrased from BitesWhenProvoked

6. "He, in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him." --Henry Fielding in "Jonathan Wild"

7. "One of the buildings in the university I attend has a large Focault's pendulum in the lobby. Someone has attached a sign to its cable that says, 'Warning - Stay away from cable. 18,000 ohms.' " -- Chris Giauque

8. "Calling [the film 'Analyze This'] 'Analyse This' is as wrong as talking about Slade's single 'Come On; Feel The Noise'." -- ox.* grammar faq.

9. There’s a reason we call it "search" and not "find". -- Steve Levy

10. "My four miles was based on one trip per day -- but assumed that she lived, say, two miles the other side of you from work, so you'd be doing regular commute + two miles to her house, then two miles back to your house, thus four miles you wouldn't otherwise drive, once per day. YMMV. (Damn! It's as fun as using "hopefully" correctly!)" -- twickster

Speaker for the Dead

I can't remember the last time I cried. But I *nearly* did again last night, just reading Speaker for the Dead.

For the record, Ender's Game is a complete classic, and if you've not heard of it, you have to read it. It's not like Cryptonomicon which was just my opinion, everyone says so. I think.

Speaker for the Dead is also very good in my opinion, but rather different, and generally regarded as less good. Certainly as I read it again, I sense a confusion of ideas over the plot. Something I understand more and more as I write, and want to fit my original ideas in, even thought the *reasons* for them have been modified out of existence.

But indeed, I also want to think about how different evolutions might give sapients with different feelings for what's right.

* If froglike you have hundreds of children, only a few of which grow to maturity, you'll likely extend very little if any consideration to them. It might be like pets: you love some, you care for many, but you get on with your life when one dies.

I have seen this a few times, in The Algebraist, and a Peter F. Hamilton. And sometimes even in reverse in a way, where we transcend, and then stop worrying about individual humans. It would be a reasonable way for God to think of us, too, for that matter, though not pleasent for us to think of that! But none that ring exceptionally true to me.

* Lack of friendship between beings. If we evolved from solitary carnivores, we might easily work together when necessary, but never really feeled obliged to help anyone. Or from bees, we might love our mother and her fertile daughters, but not care almost nothing for ourselves or our other siblings.

I've often seen emotionless portrayed, but it's generally mocked or overcome by a sufficiently persuasive human.

* Sex might not be a drive. Or we might find entirely different things erotic.

* Or take the frog example to an extreme, we might ascribe more importance to our eggs than each other, and by extension have affection for round inanimate objects the way we actually do for pets.

Speaker for the Dead

In addition, I was thinking about Novinha's children. They're mostly quite good examples of a characters with traits that are strengths or weaknesses that are described briefly. And Card goes out of his way to try to show interactions between as many people as possible -- as he says, you normally only have what the hero thinks of other characters and vice versa, but if you try to show more, you end up with ~n² perspectives to show.

Miro - The one who decides things
Ela - The sympathetic martyr
Quim - The religious one
Olhando - The one apart
Quara - The withdrawn one
Grego - The firey thoughtless little boy

OK, the last two are stretches. And I'm not sure how to describe Miro. And Quim and the little ones change a lot between Speaker and Xenocide, almost reversing, though he's still wilfull.

But I would like to do a "Which are you" quiz meme. Except -- what questions wouldn't make it completely obvious equivalent to just asking "Are you Ela? etc"?