To see something marvelous with your own eyes-that's wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you'll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold only have an incomplete half of it, and that it won't ever really exist as a whole until you're together, talking or thinking about that moment ...that's worth more than one plus one. It's worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can't even imagine it.
Alastair ReynoldsIt looked like a biology lesson for gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets.
Alastair ReynoldsI really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists.
Alastair ReynoldsLooking at where the planet is now, we could screw things up massively or we could wise-up on a species level and actually make things better. If I had to put my money where my mouth is, I think we'll wise up globally but there will still be outbreaks of local stupidity.
Alastair ReynoldsHow did you . . . pass the time?โ Sunday asked. โYou couldnโt just ching out of it, could you?โ โWe had a different form of chinging,โ Eunice said. โAn earlier type of virtual-reality technology, much more robust and completely unaffected by time lag. You may have heard of it. We called it โreadingโ.
Alastair Reynolds