“Imagine if they’d had you in Alexandria.” “Would it have added to the sum of human happiness if the library had survived?” “Apparently most of it did, despite the myth.” “Humans never use the information they’ve got. They seem to value it less the more they have.” “But there’s a romance in what we don’t know or never can.”
Karen Traviss, The Best of Us [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library]
So in a sense it isn’t me; it’s something in me that even that thing Palmer Eldritch can’t reach and consume because since it’s not me it’s not mine to lose. I feel it growing. Withstanding the external, nonessential alterations, the arm, the eyes, the teeth—it’s not touched by any of these three, the evil, negative trinity of alienation, blurred reality, and despair that Eldritch brought back with him from Proxima. Or rather from the space in between.
Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
There’s always been disaster and war, ups and downs, dark ages and golden eras. It’s not the first time that something’s wiped out a big chunk of life on the planet, either. But each time that happens and the world recovers, some species don’t make it. This time it just might be us.
Karen Traviss, The Best of Us [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library]
Below lay the tomb world, the immutable cause-and-effect world of the demonic. At median extended the layer of the human, but at any instant a man could plunge—descend as if sinking—into the hell-layer beneath. Or: he could ascend to the ethereal world above, which constituted the third of the trinary layers. Always, in his middle level of the human, a man risked the sinking. And yet the possibility of ascent lay before him
Philip K Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
While he wasn’t capable of taking his mind off something like a human would, he could certainly experience things that gave him peace and enjoyment to counterbalance uncomfortable knowledge.
Karen Traviss, The Best of Us [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library]
