David Brin: Likeness

“On this occasion, despite the wind and sparkling stars, they looked just like huge chunks of stone, pathetically chiseled by desperate folk to resemble stern gods. People did bizarre things when they were afraid…as most men and women had been for nearly all the time since the species evolved.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VIII (p. 480)
Earth (1990)

Women , Men , God , People

“I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds.”

David Brin

Orbit interview (2002)
Context: I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

“Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain reaction.”

David Brin book Earth

Part IX (p. 531)
Earth (1990)

Knowledge , Freedom

“It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures—its species—and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron.”

David Brin book Earth

Part XI (pp. 634-635)
Earth (1990)

World , Sister

“Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach.”

David Brin book Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 49 (p. 261)

“Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next. Take our modern attitude toward war. Most anthropologists now think this activity was based originally on theft and rape—perhaps rewarding enterprises for some caveman or Viking, but no longer either sexy or profitable in the context of nuclear holocaust! Today, we look back on large-scale warfare as an essentially silly enterprise.”

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 48)
Earth (1990)

War , Fashion , Thinking

“Is there an inverse relation between knowledge and wisdom? At times it seems the more we know, the less we understand.
I am not the first to note this quandary. One scholar recently wrote, “Lysos and her followers chase the siren call of pastoralism, like countless romantics before them, idealizing a past Golden Age that never was, pursuing a serenity possible only in the imagination.””

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 26 (p. 502)
Glory Season (1993)

Wisdom , Age , Imagination , Understanding

“What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.”

David Brin book Earth

Part IV (p. 187)
Earth (1990)

Passion

“What kind of man takes a live bomb across the seas in order to blow up other people? People who have mothers and lovers and children, just like him?
Probably either a professional or a patriot, Alex thought. Or, worse, both.”

David Brin book Earth

Part IX (p. 524)
Earth (1990)

Children , People , Lovers , Sea

“She closed her eyes. And while her intellect wouldn’t let her realize her deepest fear, that all this might soon be gone forever, nevertheless she stood there for a time and worshipped the only way a person like her could worship—in silence and solitude, under the temple of the sky.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VI (p. 307)
Earth (1990)

Fear , Way , Solitude , Silence

““How did he get away with pushing a book like this? How is it anyone ever believed him?”
Gordon shrugged. “It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique, Johnny. Just sound like you know what you’re talking about—as if you’re reciting facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies into the shape of a conspiracy theory and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame—those with big but weak egos—will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts.””

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 13 (p. 255)

Hate , Lie , Books , World

“How did he get away with pushing a book like this? How is it anyone ever believed him?”

David Brin book The Postman

Gordon shrugged. “It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique, Johnny. Just sound like you know what you’re talking about—as if you’re reciting facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies into the shape of a conspiracy theory and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame—those with big but weak egos—will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts.”
Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 13 (p. 255)

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