5,271,009
Copyright © 1954; by Mercury Press, Inc. (formerly Fantasy House, Inc.) and by Alfred Bester
Note (Hals): Quite possibly, Bester was kidding the readers, but its obviously not a prime. end note | |
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My idol: Kipling. Took my name from him. Aquila, one of his heroes. God damn. Greatest Negro writer since Uncle Toms Cabin. | |
Baby dreams. Pfui! All men have But if everybody has those dreams, they cant be bad, can they? God damn. Everybody in fourteenth century had lice. Did that make it good? | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Jan 2005 |
Disappearing Act
Copyright © 1953 by Ballantine Books, Inc. and by Alfred Bester | |
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This one wasnt the last war or a war to end war. They called it the War for the American Dream. General Carpenter struck that note and sounded it constantly. There are fighting generals (vital to an army), political generals (vital to an administration), and public relations generals (vital to a war). | Topic: |
All America was a toolchest of hardened and sharpened specialists. But there was trouble locating a first-class Historian until the Federal Penitentiary cooperated with the army and released Dr. Bradley Scrim from his twenty years at hard labor. [...] He had held the chair of Philosophic History at a Western university until he spoke his mind about the war for the American Dream. That got him the twenty years hard. | Topic: |
Youre a nest of ants . . . all working and toiling and specializing. For what? To preserve the American Dream, Carpenter answered hotly. Were fighting for Poetry and Culture and Education and the Finer Things in Life. Which means youre fighting to preserve me, Scrim said. Thats what Ive devoted my life to. And what do you do with me? Put me in jail. You were convicted of enemy sympathizing and fellow-travelling, Carpenter said. I was convicted of believing in my American Dream, Scrim said. Which is another way of saying I was jailed for having a mind of my own. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Jan 2005 |
Fondly Fahrenheit
Copyright © 1954 by Mercury Press, Inc. (formerly Fantasy House, Inc.) and by Alfred Bester
Note (Hals): end note | |
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He doesnt know which one of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death . . . or else you will die anothers. | |
And we lived together in that top floor, always a little cold, always a little terrified, always a little closer. . . brought together by our fear of us, our hatred between us driven like a wedge into a living tree and splitting the trunk, only to be forever incorporated into the scar tissue. | |
text checked (see note) Jan 2005 |
The Four-Hour Fugue
Copyright © 1974 by V. Conde Nast Publishing Co. and by Alfred Bester | |
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Mr. Burne always insisted that he was neither a physician nor a psychiatrist; he did not care to be associated with what he considered to be the drek of the professions. Salem Burne was a witch doctor; more precisely, a warlock. He made the most remarkable and penetrating analyses of disturbed people, not so much through his coven rituals of pentagons, incantations, incense and the like as through his remarkable sensitivity to body English and his acute interpretation of it. And this might be witchcraft after all. | |
text checked (see note) Jan 2005 |
Hell Is Forever
Copyright © 1942 by The Condé Nast Publications, Inc., successors to Street and Smith, Inc. | ||
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IV |
If his imagination is slight, a man will always find the world a source of deep and infinite wonder, a place of many delights. But if his imagination is strong, vivid, restless, he finds the world a sorry place indeeda drab jade beside the wonders of his own creations! These are wonders past all imagining. For whom? Not for me, my invisible friend. Nor for any earth-bound, flesh-bound creature. Man is a pitiful thing. Born with the imagination of gods and forever pasted to a round lump of spittle and clay. I have within me the uniqueness, the ego, the fertile loam of a timeless spirit . . . and all that richness is wrapped in a parcel of quickly rotting skin! | Topic: |
The ego, Braugh continued abstractedly, desires only what it cannot hope to attain. Once a thing is attainable, it is no longer desired. Can you grant me a reality where I may possess something which I desire because I cannot possibly possess it; and by that same possession not break the qualifications of my desire? Can you do this? Im afraid, the voice answered hesitantly, that you imagination reasons too deviously for me. Ah, Braugh murmured, half to himself, I was afraid of that. Why does the universe seem to be run by second-rate individuals not half so clever as myself? Why this mediocrity in the appointed authorities? You seek to attain the unattainable, the voice said in reasonable tones, and by that act not to attain it. The limitations are within yourself. Would you be changed? | ||
text checked (see note) Nov 2005 |
Hobsons Choice
Copyright © 1952; by Mercury Press, Inc. (formerly Fantasy House, Inc.) | |
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You might think plumbing is pretty unimportant compared to ancient Greek philosophers. Lots of people do. But the fact is, we already know the philosophy. After a while you get tired of seeing the great men and listening to them expound the material you already know. You begin to miss the conveniences and familiar patterns you used to take for granted. That, said Adyer, is a superficial attitude. You think so? Try living in the past by candlelight, without central heating, without refrigeration, canned foods, elementary | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Jan 2005 |
The Men Who Murdered Mohammed
Copyright © 1958 by Mercury Press, Inc., and by Alfred Bester
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Now, these men werent idiots. They were geniuses who paid a high price for their genius because the rest of their thinking was other-world. A genius is someone who travels to truth by an unexpected path. Unfortunately, unexpected paths lead to disaster in everyday life. | Topic: |
Nobody knows where Unknown University is or what they teach there. It has a faculty of some two hundred eccentrics, and a student body of two thousand misfitsthe kind that remain anonymous until they win Nobel prizes or become the First Man on Mars. You can always spot a graduate of U.U. when you ask people where they went to school. If you get an evasive reply like: State, or Oh, a freshwater school you never heard of, you can bet they went to Unknown. | Topic: |
In exactly seven and one half minutes (such was his rage), he put together a time machine (such was his genius). | Topics: |
Hassel does not make a circle in time, ending where the story beginsto the satisfaction of nobody and the fury of everybodyfor the simple reason that time isnt circular, or linear, or tandem, discoid, syzygous, longinquitous, or pandicularted. Time is a private matter, as Hassel discovered.
Note (Hals): end note | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Jan 2005 |
Oddy and Id
Copyright © 1950 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. under the title The Devils Invention | |
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It is a known fact that all wars are founded in economic conflict, or to put it another way, a trial by arms is merely the last battle of an economic war. | Topic: |
The difference between a Welfare State and a Benevolent Despot is slight. In times of crisis, either can be traduced by the sincerest motives into the most abominable conduct. | Topic: |
Every man nurses the secret belief that were he God he could do the job much better. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Jan 2005 |
Background graphic copyright © 2004 by Hal Keen