“Auger could not help marvelling at the experience of being inside the ALS sphere and seeing her world as it should have been. This was an earth that had never known nuclear war, or runaway climatic catastrophe, or smart weather, or a Nanocaust. The sight of it made her want to weep. No image had ever come close to the heartbreaking beauty of this small blue world, a beauty all the more acute now that she knew how exquisitely fragile it was. It was the beauty of a butterfly’s wing.”

— Alastair Reynolds , book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 40 (pp. 596-597)

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Alastair Reynolds 198

British novelist and astronomer 1966

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