Quotes from book
Summertide

Summertide

Set more than four thousand years in the future, Summertide introduces a galaxy widely populated by humans and a variety of intelligent aliens, all of whom live in the shadow of the vanished race known only as the Builders. Nothing is known about the Builders, but the gigantic artifacts they have left behind - many of them still hardly understood - dominate the areas of space in which they are found. One such is the double-planet system of Opal and Quake - the former covered in water, the latter in desert - connected by a Builder device called the Umbilical. It is to this system that a variety of humans and aliens come, ostensibly to witness Summertide - the annual tidal wave which sweeps across Opal.


“No purpose is served by making private suffering into a public event.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 23 (p. 254)

“Be an optimist! It’s the only way to live.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 151)

“What does one do when a madman suggests an appealing course of action? One worries—but probably goes along with it.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 151)

“That’s what logic says. But I say, phooey, who wants logic? Not you, and not me. We want results.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 150)

“The partners were there; gravity was calling the changes, and the cosmic dance was ready to begin.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 11, “Summertide Minus Thirteen” (p. 127)

“Everyone was polite; no one was happy.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 11, “Summertide Minus Thirteen” (p. 126)

“Mathematics is universal. But very little else is.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 10, “Summertide Minus Eighteen” (p. 119)

“But mere plausibility did not make the statement true.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 6, “Summertide Minus Twenty-Nine” (p. 65)

“But humans had to learn to ignore appearance. No two beings who shared common thinking processes and common goals should be truly alien to each other.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 5, “Summertide Minus Thirty” (p. 61)

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