P.E.’s Reviews > Stories of Your Life and Others > Status Update

'A calliagnostic perceives faces perfectly well; he or she can tell the difference between a pointed chin and a receding one, a straight nose and a crooked one, clear skin or blemished skin. He or she simply doesn't experience any aesthetic reaction to those differences.'

'[...] no matter whether he became devout by seeing Heaven's light or by a lifetime of effort, any ultimate reunion with Sarah couldn't re-recreate what they'd shared in the mortal plane.'

["Hell Is the Absence of God"]

'What is the role of human scientists in an age when the frontiers of scientific inquiry have moved beyond the comprehension of humans?'

["The Evolution of Human Science"]

'[...] they had overlooked another possibility: if a creature could be expressed in a name, reproducing that creature was equivalent to transcribing the name. An organism could contain, instead of a tiny analogue of its body, a lexical representation instead.'

["Seventy-Two Letters]

'For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in any conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place.'

["Story of Your Life"]

'Consider the phenomenon of light hitting water at one angle, and travelling throught it at a different angle. Explain it by saying that a difference in the index if refraction caused the light to change direction, and one saw the world as humans saw it. Explain it by saying that light minimized the time needed to travel to its destination, and one saw the world as the heptapods saw it.'

["Story of Your Life"]

'The idea of thinking in a linguistic yet nonphonological mode always intrigued me. I had a friend born of deaf parents; he grew up using American Sign Language, and he told me that he often thought in ASL instead of English. I used to wonder what it was like to have one's thoughts be manually coded, to reason using a pair of hands instead of an inner voice.'

["Story of Your Life"]

'Neither of us will be able to convert the other. I view the world as incidental to my aims, while he cannot allow someone with enhanced intelligence to work purely in self-interest. My plans for mind-computer links will have enormous repercussions for the world, provoking government or popular reactions that would interfere with his plans. As I am proverbially not a part of the solution, I am part of the problem.'

'The tower dwellers at this altitude felt no unease with their station; they always greeted the miners warmly and wished them luck with their task at the vault. They lived inside the damp mists of clouds, they saw storms from below and from above, they harvested crops from the air, and they never feared that this was an improper place for men to be.'