Quotes from book
Transcendence

Transcendence

The Zardalu were the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by an unswerving belief in their own supremacy. Then their slaves rose up against them, and for eleven thousand years the Zardalu had been extinct and the spiral arm had known a kind of peace. But now the Zardalu are back . . . The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continued to perplex scholars and explorers alike, had led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H'sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they found the Zardalu - just a few who had been trapped in stasis all those millennia, held there for purposes known only to the Builders. And in the struggle that ensued the Zardalu had been set loose, transported by Builder technology to to galactic parts unknown - free to ravage any world and any race within their grasp. The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat was to find them and wipe them out before they had time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. The problem was that no one believed the story. Only Darya Land and her companions had actually seen the aliens - and no evidence existed to support their claims. And so the course seemed clear: get a ship themselves and search out the Zardalu. But the way would not be easy. Even once they managed to locate the Zardalu, they still had the Builders to deal with. For the closer they got to their quarry, the more clear it became that the Zardalu and their world were closely entwined with the fate - and the plans - of the Builders themselves.


“What I found was worse than diversity—it was insanity.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 17 (p. 188)

“But no one, no matter how intelligent, could make good inferences from bad data.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 11 (p. 126)

“If you win too easy, better ask what’s going on that you don’t know about.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 11 (p. 125)

“Old habits did not just die hard. They refused to die at all.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 7, “The Torvil Anfract” (p. 70)

Similar authors

Charles Sheffield photo
Charles Sheffield 41
British scientist, American science fiction writer 1935–2002
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Arthur C. Clarke 207
British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u…
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert A. Heinlein 557
American science fiction author
Isaac Asimov photo
Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni…
Frank Herbert photo
Frank Herbert 158
American writer
Ray Bradbury photo
Ray Bradbury 401
American writer
Herbert A. Simon photo
Herbert A. Simon 58
American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and p…
David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace 185
American fiction writer and essayist
Elias Canetti photo
Elias Canetti 43
Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist,…
George Raymond Richard Martin photo
George Raymond Richard Martin 35
American writer, screenwriter and television producer