Sign in with Facebook
Gethenians could make their vehicles go faster, but they do not. If asked why not, they answer “Why?” Like asking Terrans why all our vehicles must go so fast; we answer “Why not?” No disputing tastes. Terrans tend to feel they’ve got to
...more
“Then comes September and the sun tilts to the south. Yes, autumn in New York: the great song of the city and the great season. Not just for the relief from the brutal extremes of winter or summer, but for that glorious slant of the light, that feeling that in certain moments lances in on that tilt—that you had been thinking you were living in a room and suddenly with a view between buildings out to the rivers, a dappled sky overhead, you are struck by the fact that you live on the side of a planet—that the great city is also a great bay on a great world. In those golden moments even the most hard-bitten citizen, the most oblivious urban creature, perhaps only pausing for a WALK sign to turn green, will be pierced by that light and take a deep breath and see the place as if for the first time, and feel, briefly but deeply, what it means to live in a place so strange and gorgeous.”
― New York 2140
― New York 2140
“Sleepy took a sip of his drink before responding. “Sounds like a plan. Although I don’t like the implications. If I get taken down, the Bob that gets restored won’t really be me.” “What, you’re positing a soul, now? For us?” Surly, I mean Hungry, rolled his eyes. “Every time the crew of Star Trek transported, they faced the same philosophical question.”
― For We Are Many
― For We Are Many
“Place lag doesn’t require the crossing of a time zone. It doesn’t even require an airplane. Sometimes I’ve been in a forest, for a hike or a picnic, and then later the same day I have returned to a city. Surrounded by cars and noise and blocks of concrete and glass, I’ll find myself asking, how is it that I was walking in the woods this morning? I know it was only this morning I was in that different place; but already it feels like a week ago. We”
― Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot
― Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot
“So it’s still New York. People can’t give up on it. It’s what economists used to call the tyranny of sunk costs: once you’ve put so much time and money into a project, it gets hard to just eat your losses and walk. You are forced by the structure of the situation to throw good money after bad, grow obsessed, double down, escalate your commitment, and become a mad gibbering apartment dweller, unable to imagine leaving. You persevere unto death, a monomaniacal New Yorker to the end.”
― New York 2140
― New York 2140
“Well-established law, going back to Roman law, to the Justinian Code in fact, turned out to be weirdly clear on the status of the intertidal. It’s crazy to read, like Roman futurology: The things which are naturally everybody’s are: air, flowing water, the sea, and the sea-shore. So nobody can be stopped from going on to the sea-shore. The sea-shore extends as far as the highest winter tide. The law of all peoples gives the public a right to use the sea-shore, and the sea itself. Anyone is free to put up a hut there to shelter himself. The right view is that ownership of these shores is vested in no one at all. Their legal position is the same as that of the sea and the land or sand under the sea.”
― New York 2140
― New York 2140
John Dupre’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at John Dupre’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by John Dupre
Lists liked by John Dupre
