Quotes from book
Natural History

Name: Natural History
Author: Justina Robson

A daring and original new novel from one of sci fi’s most provocative voices, Natural History is a stunning work of bold ideas, unforgettable characters, and epic adventure as one woman seeks to explore what may be the greatest mystery of all.... IMAGINE A WORLD... Half-human, half-machine, Voyager Isol was as beautiful as a coiled scorpion–and just as dangerous. Her claim that she’d found a distant but habitable earthlike planet was welcome news to the rest of the Forged. But it could mean the end of what was left of the humanity who’d created and once enslaved them. IMAGINE A FATE... It was on behalf of the “unevolved” humans that Professor Zephyr Duquesne, cultural archaeologist and historian of Earth’s lost worlds, was chosen by the Gaiasol military authority to uncover the truth about this second “earth.” And her voyage, traveling inside the body of Isol, will take her to the center of a storm exploding across a spectrum of space and time, dimension and consciousness. IMAGINE THE IMPOSSIBLE... On an abandoned planet, in a wrinkle of time, Isol and Zephyr will find a gift and a curse: a power so vast that once unlocked, it will change the universe forever. With civil war looming, Zephyr’s perilous journey will lead her to a past where one civilization mysteriously vanished...and another may soon follow. From the Trade Paperback edition.

“On the other hand…why was there always an “other hand?””

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 31 “Swallowing Hard on It” (p. 314)

“You could try and breed territoriality out of the bone, but like a bad fairy it popped up again and again in all sorts of guises and from all kinds of DNA. As long as there was plenty, then everyone was happy to pay culture its due, but as soon as there was trouble—bang, out came the demonization memes and, lo and behold, they were back to the Dark Ages faster than you could say “mattock.””

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 8 “Briefing” (p. 101)

“It is the rare person who can stand aside and observe that our minds and identities are largely constructs of our social order, that we are abstract and arbitrary collections of ideas that resemble dusty archives in the galleries of a museum, visited by nobody, and maintained by a series of those insensible robots that are our habits.”

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 25 “Tom Who Built the Aeroplane” (pp. 254-255)

““So, you’re saying you have no idea what this stuff is.” At last, something that sounded plausible.”

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 2 “Isol and Corvax” (p. 29)