Quotes from book
In the Garden of Iden

In the Garden of Iden
Kage Baker

In the Garden of Iden is a 1997 science fiction novel by American writer Kage Baker. Although it is set entirely in the 16th century, in Spain and England, it is a science fiction story revolving around the activities of a group of immortal cyborgs, individuals who appear human but have been transformed by high technology.

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“How could millennia-old superbeings be so boring?”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 213)

Kage Baker photo

“The leaf that spreads in the sunlight is the only holiness there is. I haven’t found holiness in the faiths of mortals, nor in their music, nor in their dreams: it’s out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don’t know what it is, this holiness: but it’s there, and it looks at the sky.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 46)

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“Smashing things is the violent way stupid mortal monkeys solve their problems.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

Kage Baker photo

“I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 215)

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““So as we’ve seen, not one faith has ever lived up to its promises. The world has never become a paradise, quite the opposite, in fact: think of the millions upon millions slaughtered, tortured, imprisoned for this great idea, this good news, this revolution. The visionary who works against human nature to impose his—or her—sweeping vision on the world is inevitably its worst enemy.
Now, who isn’t? Consider the work of certain individual mortals who set themselves simple tasks. They saw no need to raise armies; they saw no need for revolution or bloodshed; they worked instead for realistic goals with the tools they had. And they succeeded, and their works have been of lasting benefit to humanity.” He erased the board with relish and chalked a new set of names:.
“People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will.””

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 47)

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“Funny thing about those Middle Ages,” said Joseph. “They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they’re in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there’s an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can’t deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 17 (pp. 192-193)

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“And what a clever guy this Harpole is, isn’t he? Awfully good at noticing all kinds of little unusual things about people and keeping them on file in his head. So he’s built a theory around us, has he? He added two and two and came up with five, but nobody else in the house was aware there was anything to count.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 12 (p. 128)

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“Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 45)
Context: No nation, creed, or race was any better or worse than another; all were flawed, all were equally doomed to suffering, mostly because they couldn’t see that they were all alike. Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely. They did enjoy killing one another and frequently came up with ingenious excuses for doing so on a large scale—religions, economic theories, ethnic pride—but we couldn’t condemn them for it, as it was in their moral natures and they were too stupid to know any better.

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“Imagine being told that it hadn’t mattered whether the Christians or the Moors got Spain! I can still remember my shock. I got over it fairly quickly, though, because by that time I had learned enough history to know that in the long run it never mattered a damn where any particular race of people planted its collective ass.”

Kage Baker book In the Garden of Iden

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

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