“Why do you find it so easy,” Michael Kardos asked, “to believe we go to heaven after we die, but so hard to believe we can go into the heavens while we’re alive? Following the Earthseed Destiny is difficult. Massively difficult. That’s the challenge. But if we want to do it, someday we’ll do it. It’s not impossible.” I had spoken the same words to him shortly after he came to live at Acorn. He had said then with bitter contempt that the Destiny was meaningless. All he wanted to do, he said, was to earn enough money to house, feed, and clothe his family. Once he was able to do that, he said, then maybe he’d have time for science fiction. Indeed.”
― Parable of the Talents
― Parable of the Talents
“I tried to feed nuance to audiences of politicians and donors, bankers and designers and housewives. Honesty left my listeners bored, or queasy. Eventually I learned to present my life as a neat moral package, wiped clean; as my clear-eyed lover pointed out, this was how fear of famine had been leveraged to pass climate legislation. It was the way of the world to make selflessness of selfishness, smooth pâtés from butchers’ discards. No one paid to see blood on the plate. I went along.”
― Land of Milk and Honey
― Land of Milk and Honey
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