Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

Essentially, we're breeding the underclass into extinction. Once we get into one o these poverty zones the first thing we do is give it improved healthcare. After that, the next generation takes advantage of universal schooling; they can see that there's a world outside the ghetto that's worth taking part in. From that they progress to earning a living, they contribute to the whole rather than detract.

p. 595

This is an interesting idea - that healthcare is a prerequisite for participation in society. As healthcare becomes more and more precious in our society, this seems very important. It is sort of moving up on the Maslow scale - taking care of one's self should be easy, then other things like education and achievement can kick in.

So, when do we get universal healthcare. I pay almost $1000/mo for healthcare in 2 countries. It seems a bit much. 

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

A clean start on a fresh world. It's a desire that's hardwired into so many humans. It comes from our impetuosity and curiosity, the wanderlust gene. But it also has roots in the dissatisfaction with the society in which we live. How mush easier it is to move and start anew than to rectify the institutional, even constitutional, mistakes fo a monolithic social system. Between them, these motivators were enough to launch the first wave of colonies It was always going to be financially unviable... but still we went ahead.

p. 593

This is sort of the old idea that colonies can never solve the problems that they are trying o alleviate. Australia did not solve the problems of poverty and crime in England. Also, we often want to just walk away from fixing problems and start fresh and new and make the same mistakes again, only in the future, sparing us with dealing with the problems.

This whole section fo the book has some very interesting thoughts about society and social problems. Very nice.

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

As for the universe, it is contained in your mind. Observation is purely relative. I can watch the stars from here, all of them, while you crawl between them in your tin cans ans see only one at a time. I appreciate my life, Earthman; there is less memory in my brain, and much more thought.

p. 462

Less memory and more thought? What a concept.

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

It's just that nowhere you live can ever be exotic. That's only ever somewhere else.

p. 94

This reminds me of a quote from Chip Delaney in Stars in My Pockets like Grains of Sand, where Marq Deyth remarks that home is a place you can never go for the first time; you can only return there. The first time, it isn't home yet, although it may come to be home.

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

So the lies and moods just kept on swinging a little further each time, picking curiously at the envelope of acceptability as if it were an interesting scab. All the while he built a defensive shell of stubborn silence around himself, which grew progressively thicker each time his father raged and his mother showed her quiet disapproval. Nothing apart from i-media interested him, nothing apart from gaining more i-media time motivated him; he had few friends, his teachers virtually gave up, and sibling rivalry at home began to resemble a full-blown war zone. With his hate-the-world attitude and his rampaging hormones, he was the basic teenager from hell.

p. 86

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

So there she was at a quarter past midnight, tired and utterly miserable, standing in the kitchen in her toweling robe, ironing her blouse for tomorrow while the shrill whoops of other people's orgasms echoed along the hall.

If there was such a thing as karma, somebody somewhere in this universe was going to get hurt bad to level this out.

p. 33

And you thought your day was bad. LOL

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

Jedzella stuck her hand up, finders wiggling frantically, "Were they people just like us?"

"Their bodies were different." Denise said. "Some of the races who ere members of the empire had arms and legs similar to ours, some had wings, some had four legs, or six or ten, some had tentacles, some were fish, and some were so big and scary that if you and I saw them we'd run away. But how do we judge people?"

"What they say and do," the children yelled happily, "never how they look."

p. 22

I wish more schools taught this sort of thing.

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

... but after four decades of accumulated optimization the 3rd fleet software had become classic bloatware, total deadweight.

p. 14

I thought o my own computer and the term bloatware. I have a lot of programs hat I get and them only use a little. Often they are superseded by newer versions or by different programs that take over the functions I originally bought them for. Sometimes the companies that make the software are bough by others and then there is a very strange merging of functions that may leave orphan software on the hard drive. And, now that hard drive space is so cheap, there is often no incentive to delete things I don't event think about anymore. Of course you can get a new machine, as I do almost every year, but, with the mac, it is so easy to just transfer all hat deadweight to the new drive so it looks just like the old desktop, with all its flaws. Will it eventually collapse? How do companies deal with this?

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton

It would start with one of them making some comment: Thought you company people were too good to drink with us. Not that it mattered what was actually said, the ac of speaking was a way of ego-pumping until one of them was hot enough to throw the first punch. Same dumb-arse ritual in every lowlife bar on every human planet.

p. 5

Peter Hamilton

I am going to be posting a few quotes from one of my very favorite authors - Peter F. Hamilton. He is a British author who has written some great har SF, space opera things in the past ten years or so. His Night's Dawn Trilogy is one of the most creative takes on the future to come along in a very long time.

Peter's books are often very complicated with a lot of character to keep track of. They are very complex characters, an their interaction is always interesting. There is a real political feel to these stories because of the shifting patterns of the various factions and players. IT can be hard to keep track of and it is not for everyone. But I like it.

So, during the recent snow, I curled up with Fallen Dragon, and let the cold stay outside.

Bob Heinlein

I haven't been posting a lot recently because I have been reading some Heinlein stories. I used to think that he was one of the writers who had a really good way with words and so I was surprised when I didn't really find much in the way of quotes.  When I fist read him as a teenager, I was struck by what I felt was the really great philosophy and the cutting edge ideas. So, what happened on the reread?

One of the things about Heinlein is that he makes speeches and puts his personal philosophy into the mouths of his characters. Now, I like the philosophy, but I found that the speeches aren't really quotable. They are interesting, mostly, but they aren't really well worded. Some of his ideas are also situationally conveyed and that also is hard to quote. 

And then maybe it was the stories I read - Tunnel in the Sky and Day After Tomorrow. THey are older pieces and not of the quality of, say, Stranger in a Strange Land. I will reread that in the next few months and we'll see if it holds up over time.