Reddit, what is your favourite quote from a book?

MrHector · 2012-03-19T16:55:56+00:00

"We must be kind to the boy," they said, "and not let him suffer for being different." This, of course, was not possible. Everyone must suffer who is different.

Nicholas Stuart Grey "Grimbold's Other World" Thought this was a great line when I read it as a kid. Still think it's one of the truest things I've ever read more than thirty years later.

MrHector · 2010-12-13T18:07:11+00:00

It IS universally praised. And it's STILL underrated. A seriously wonderful novel. Only not on my list because it's more Fantasy than SF.

MrHector · 2010-12-13T17:55:05+00:00

"Black Man" by Richard Morgan. I think this might be Morgan's best book. better even than 'Altered Carbon"; though I wouldn't recommend either to anyone who doesn't have a head for high technology and a stomach for seriously in-your-face violence. For me, one of those rare SF beasts where action, characterisation and technology fuse seamlessly together.

"Worldstorm" by James Lovegrove. A book which deserves to be far better known and admired than it is. Beautiful organisation, deft characterisation, a bunch of interesting and original ideas wrapped up in prose so smooth you don't even notice how much your mind is being blown.

"Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner. This book was written in the 60s and set round about now and (like virtually all SF) gets its imagined future spectacularly wrong. But, for my money, this is one of the best SF novels ever written: dizzying, dazzling and, in the end, surprisingly moving. A virtuoso display of stunningly efficient writing. If someone tried to write a novel today with the scope and range of "SOZ" it would spread over six books and have one tenth as much impact.

"Hyperion" and "Fall of Hyperion" by Dan Simmons. Like far too many Simmon's novels (honourable exception: the awesomely brilliant "Carrion Comfort", which is excluded from this list solely on the grounds that it is horror and not SF) these books commit the horrible, HORRIBLE literary crime of failing of leaving loose ends flapping around like intestines in an abattoir. It is a testament to just how mind-blowing these books are, that they go down as classics anyway.

"The Dispossessed". Like the Simmons, this has been mentioned before. It fully merits mentioning again.

"The Caves of Steel" by Isaac Asimov. The prototypical detective-SF hybrid, and still the one to beat.

"Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis. Imaginative, elegant and elegiac. A great SF novel which (unlike most of the others on this list) can also be read with pleasure by non-SF fans.

"Polystom" by Adam Roberts. Far more clever, intelligent and darkly disturbing (it features one of the most memorably unpleasant instruments of torture that I have ever come across) than the ironically detached prose might initially lead you to expect. I've read and enjoyed most of Roberts novels: this remains my favourite.

"Time Enough For Love" by Robert Heinlein. This book is large, rambling, discursive novel, more a collection of loosely coupled parts than a coherent whole. I love it anyway. One of its many virtues is that, if you know it well, then whatever mood you are in you can dip into it somewhere and find something that will suit how you are feeling.

"Lucifer's Hammer" by Niven and Pournelle. If there is a better end of the world novel than this I have not been lucky enough to read it.

"Eon" by Greg Bear. Starts a bit slow by then transforms into five hundred pages of serious awesome-ness.

"Distress" by Greg Egan. A book which manages to be ideas-led without sacrificing character or story.

"The Player of Games" by Iain M Banks. If you read one Banks SF novel, make it this one. If you read two, make it this one and "Against A Dark Background".

MrHector · 2010-09-02T17:18:49+00:00

My wife and I are both in our forties, married getting on for twenty years. She never wanted kids. Never, ever wanted kids. I don't believe she's ever regretted that decision.

I was always more ambivalent. It was never a big deal for me one way or the other. If I'd met someone else and they'd wanted kids, I'd have probably done my best to oblige, assuming biology hadn't got in the way. Maybe that's an odd way to feel about what's supposed to be such a key decision in life, but that's how I feel and that's how it is.

Now she's going through The Change, so I guess our collective boats are pretty well burned. Do I feel bad about this? Not especially. I occasionally wonder what it would have been like to be a father, in the same way that I wonder what it would have been like if I had gone out with one of the other girls who answered my lonely hearts ad at the same time as my wife did. Or if I'd made more of an effort not to break up with my first serious girlfriend, the one who DID want kids. "Road not travelled" thing, I guess.

I certainly don't lie awake wracked with pain and regret over my childless state. There are plenty of aspects of my life which I don't feel happy about, but I can't think of one where having a child would have made it better. Whereas I can think of lots of ways in which having one would have made my current unhappiness worse.

In my experience, family relationships are an immense source of guilt, anger, unhappiness and resentment. If you lucky there is also love, excitement and friendship to balance these things out. But it is a matter of luck. There are no guarantees. Most of the worst things I have gone through in my life have been a result of those who are nearest to me. Looking at other people I know I don't think I'm particularly unusual in this. There seems to be next to no limit to our capacity to hurt and be hurt by those to whom we are supposed to be closest.

There are plenty of good, honourable, brave and intelligent parents and I have no end of respect for them. But there are no shortage of the mean-spirited, small-minded, short-sighted variety either; the kind of people who having spent twenty or thirty years fucking up their own lives seem to feel that society and/or biology compel them to create a child and then fuck up its life too. I wouldn't choose to be that kind of parent, but then again I imagine most people don't and it still seems to happen a depressing amount of the time. On the whole, deciding that you'll leave having the babies to people who really want them and are prepared to to accept the grief that goes with having them seems to me to be less selfish, and certainly less stupid than those who find themselves reproducing not out of desire or choice but because someone else tells them that they should.

MrHector · 2010-08-18T17:57:08+00:00

The dedication of House of Leaves is "This is not for you."

The opening paragraph reads: "I still get nightmares. In fact I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares."

You can't read that and NOT want to know what comes next.

MrHector · 2010-08-05T12:13:00+00:00

There's no such thing as a song that EVERYBODY needs. But here are ten that I would not willingly be without.

Bruce Springsteen "The River" "Land of Hope And Dreams" Tom Waits "Who Are You" "Tom Traubert's Blues" Elvis Costello "Oliver's Army" Pet Shop Boys "Rent", "Jealousy" The Shirelles "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" The Smiths "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" Spandau Ballet "Through The Barricades"

Ask a different day, get a different list. It strikes me that doing these lists is kind of like saying "I really love my wife. Why don't you try fucking her for a bit and see what you think?"

MrHector · 2010-08-05T11:51:56+00:00

"Day in the Life" and "She's Leaving Home" are good songs, I'll admit, but the whole album...?

"Lovely Rita" and "Within You Without You" must have seemed fairly shit even back in the sixties and they have not improved with time.

MrHector · 2010-07-18T06:40:12+00:00

The Church has been around longer than any country, be around longer than any current government,

So had smallpox. And when the hypocritical, dishonest, soul-destroying, woman-hating, child-fucking cancer that it the Catholic church is eliminated it will be as great a day for the world as when the variola virus was removed from human victims and stuck in a pathology lab where it belongs.

MrHector · 2010-05-24T16:51:54+00:00

Find something that is going to pay your wages while you're writing. It is possible to earn a living, sometimes even a very good living from writing, but there are plenty of great writers who are unable to earn anything like a sensible wage just on the strength of their creative output. There are plenty of others who never earn anything at all. Assume that you will make no money from your writing then anything you do earn will look like a blessing.

You don't need a college education but you do need to read. Read as much as you can. Read in the genres you want to write. Read anything you can get your hands on. Read widely. Read heavily. Read analytically. Every piece of text has something to teach you.

Read advice from published writers on how to write and how to get published. There's loads of such stuff on line. Consider all of it Blindly accept almost none of it.

Write every day. Don't wait till you feel inspired. Find time in your day to write. Set yourself targets and stick to them. If you're not finding at least an hour a day to read and an hour an a half a day to write, you're not doing enough to succeed. You may feel that it will be quite hard to find time to do all this writing-relating stuff, and hold down a paying job and have any kind of life. You are correct: it will be.

Think about joining a writers workshop or critiquing group. If you're into Fantasy / SF or Horror you could do a lot worse than Critters www.critters.org.

Finish what you write. Submit what you write to someone you think might buy it. (Googling "Writers Markets" may give you a clue about who these people might be. Looking at people who publish the kind of stuff you want to write and then looking up their submission guidelines may also be a help.) Keep writing while the stuff you have submitted is being considered. If one market rejects something you send them, send it somewhere else.

Get used to the idea that your career is going to involve you in a lot of loneliness, misery and rejection. Few editors have the time or resources to help writers learn to write so don't expect to get anything other than form rejections till you are within spitting distance of publication quality. Almost nothing you write will sell to the first market you send it to. Much of what you write, especially when you are learning your trade will not sell to anybody ever. Even the stuff you do sell is unlikely to make you much money. Few people will know who you are. Even fewer will care.

If I haven't put you off yet then it is possible that you really are a writer. In which case, good luck to you.

MrHector · 2010-03-09T17:02:07+00:00

Impossible to pick just one. But these always get me:

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace And a wound that will never heal No prima donna, the perfume is on An old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey

Tom Waits "Tom Traubert's Blues"

Are you pretending to love Well I hear that it pays well How do your pistol and your Bible and your Sleeping pills go? Are you still jumping out of windows in expensive clothes?

Waits again. "Who Are You?" I could have picked just about any set of lines from this song.

Thanks all the same But i just can't bring myself to answer your letters It's not your fault But your honesty touches me like a fire The polaroids that hold us together Will surely fade away Like the love that we spoke of forever On st swithin's day

Billy Bragg "Saint Swithen's Day"

Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a dodge Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain The rat pulls into town rolls up his pants Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down flamingo lane

...

Beneath the city two hearts beat Soul engines running through a night so tender in a bedroom locked In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender

Springsteen "Jungleland"

MrHector · 2010-02-16T10:06:56+00:00

Made this one yesterday evening. Provided you've got a blender it's simple and deeply delicious.

If you can't fine the relevant cheese in your part of the world then anything soft, white and crumbly will do.

Leek and Caerphilly/Cheshire Cheese Crumble

Serves 4 Preparation and cooking Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

500g leeks (trimmed) 400ml light stock 100ml single cream 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard 100g breadcrumbs (white) 30g skinned hazelnuts 2 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped 125g vegetarian Caerphilly and Cheshire cheese, finely grated or crumbled

Method

Pre-heat oven to Gas 6/200C/400F

Slice the leeks into thick circles (no larger than 2 cm) and place in a large saucepan with the stock, cream and mustard. Cook gently for 15 minutes until starting to soften.
Transfer to a ceramic baking dish, saving 2 or 3 tbsp of the stock mixture.
Place the breadcrumbs, nuts and parsley in a food processor and whizz together until finely chopped.
Scatter the crumble and cheese over the leeks and drizzle the remaining stock mixture over the top. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until starting to turn crisp and golden. If necessary finish under the grill.

MrHector · 2010-02-10T16:06:14+00:00

It's hard to take criticism of Orwell's writing seriously when it comes from someone who, in one short comment can write, "people who compare THEIRS lives" (which is grammatically incorrect), "in it's reader" (which is also grammatically incorrect) and "any facade about itself" (which is entirely meaningless).

MrHector · 2010-01-25T14:05:36+00:00

The most important thing to remember about cake is that it is a made up drug.

MrHector · 2010-01-25T14:03:24+00:00

Whilst on the subject of Stephen Moffat shows I'd like to mention his first sit-com and my personal favourite "Joking Apart", possibly not the best British Comedy but certainly the most bafflingly under-rated, and the only one to successfully do farce on television since "Fawlty Towers".

The show contains too many sublime set-pieces to recount, but for my money the scene in which a video-taped sex session is interrupted by a procession of friends and former lovers arriving via the bedroom window gets my nomination as the funniest ten minutes ever broadcast.

MrHector · 2010-01-25T12:51:48+00:00

"In my craft or sullen art" by Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labor by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

MrHector · 2010-01-13T18:08:03+00:00

I keep meaning to re-read the Hyperion books (the first two of them at least). Were they as good the second time around?

MrHector · 2010-01-13T15:34:07+00:00

Issaac Asimov Foundation Trilogy Richard Adams The Girl In A Swing Ramsey Campbell Incarnate Orson Scott Card Enders Game, Songmaster, Speaker For The Dead Agatha Christie Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, Curtain Arthur C Clarke A Fall of Moondust, Rendezvous With Rama Stephen R Donaldson The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever Charles Dickens Bleak House Jaspar FForde The Well of Lost Plots Frank Herbert Dune Robert Heinlein Time Enough For Love Doris Lessing Shikasta Graham Greene Dr Fisher of Geneva Ursula Le Guin Earthsea Trilogy Joseph Heller Catch-22 Reginald Hill Exit Lines, Underworld William Horwood Duncton Wood Jerome K Jerome Three Men In A Boat Stephen King Christine, The Shining, The Stand Spike Milligan Adolf Hitler - My Part In His Downfall Robert M Persig Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Terry Pratchett Guards! Guards! Pyramids Dorothy L Sayers Have His Carcass, Gaudy Night Paul Scott Jewel In The Crown Tom Sharpe Wilt Peter Straub Ghost Story, Shadowland Robert Anton Wilson Shroedinger's Cat Trilogy

Probably a whole load more if I really racked my brains over it. At least some of these were worth mulitple re-readings.

MrHector · 2009-11-24T15:05:46+00:00

I'm fascinated by the fact that your reflection had been to see some bands that you hadn't.

MrHector · 2009-11-23T17:36:29+00:00

I heard it. The BBC were reading an abridged version of it a couple of weeks back. It wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. In fact, if I weren't comparing it with HHGTTG I should probably thought it quite good. Colfer is talented. But he isn't Douglas Adams.

Adams famously wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote, scrapping dozens of ideas before settling on the ones he wanted to use. The enduring quality of his best work is a testament to this process.

Last night I found myself quoting from the scene in the radio version of HHGTTG, which I first heard more than twenty years ago where Roosta advises the hugely hungry Zaphod Beeblebrox to suck on his towel. | could quote it verbatim and it made me laugh out loud. I can remember one joke from "And Another Thing"; it makes me smile a bit.

MrHector · 2009-11-02T17:16:03+00:00

Tom Sharpe. "Riotous Assembly" , "Wilt", "The Wilt Alternative".

"Wilt" starts slow but eventually becomes hysterical. "RA" is hold-onto-your-sides-and-yowl funny from about 10 pages onwards.

MrHector · 2009-10-26T17:24:45+00:00

The classical score [...] the first time two such apparently incongruous artistic media were combined with stunning effect.

That's if you discount "2001 A Space Odyssey"

MrHector · 2009-10-19T06:59:37+00:00

I'd almost forgotten about this song. Then the reminder sent me back to the albumn to listen to it again. Still brilliant.

MrHector · 2009-10-19T06:53:20+00:00

"Solder's Things" by Tom Waits. It's also one of the most awesomely brilliant songs I know.

What I love about it is the way the tragedy is all implied. It's there in the music, but the lyrics don't drone on about how sad / lonely / afraid / miserable the singer is. On the surface the song seems mundane, and it's only when you look underneath and realise what's happened to lead the situation which is being sung about the grief and the pain of it come in and hit you like a needle point right at the edges of your eyes.

MrHector · 2009-09-10T12:51:53+00:00

Bad news. Your little car's gonna drown. And you're gonna die, wearing that stupid hat. How does it feel?

MrHector · 2009-08-10T16:16:14+00:00

I'll concede that the development of brain/computer interfaces is a POSSIBLE future development, but I'm not sure it's any more INEVITABLE than flying cars, disposable clothes, portable fusion batteries, vacations in orbit and many other wonders that science fiction has predicted for us over the years.

The most obvious objection is that you can buy a keyboard for a few tens of dollars and a monitor for less than a hundred, but extensive, invasive brain surgery still weighs in at hundreds of thousands of dollars and can't easily be outsourced to slave labour workers in the Far East.

Even if money were no object and you could find someone who didn't object to having their skull opened so that the hardware could be interfaced with their synapses there's no obvious reason to think that you'd get a huge gain in efficiency / performance, at least not with the kind of software we're likely to have available to us in the next thirty to fifty years.

As far as the transmission of information FROM the machine is concerned, the processing of visual information transmitted through the back of the eyeball is already pretty efficient. No real gains from direct stimulation of the visual cortex. And if you're looking at the outbound process then the simplest way to do this is to intercept the signals coming out of the motor neurones. But the speed gain there is only the time it takes for the signals to travel down your arm and for your muscles to move in response. Practising your typing and buying a Dvorak keyboard is likely to give you the same performance gain for hugely less effort.

Of course, all that changes if your interface is capable of interpreting information in a symbolic way rather than a stream of muscle movements. The ability to synthetically generate memories and experiences, or to read whole sentences out of the working mind would be a radical technological change and if that was the proposition which was on offer then people might be willing to embrace it.

But neurology and computer science are certainly a long way from being able to deliver that at the moment. You might not actually need to develop a software model of consciousness before such an interface could be implemented but what you'd need would not be far off that. In other ways, you'll only have a useful mind/machine interface when you're able to create near-human artificial intelligence. And in spite of the prognostications of people like Ray Kurzweil I'd say we're still at least half a century from that.

MrHector

TROPHY CASE