commonplace

• The other thing about the Worm’s language education system is that it creates ghosts. Figures that hover in your peripheral vision, stumbling along the borders of several languages, muttering strange spells. After the funeral, one of my ghosts started talking in President Han’s voice.

  — Djuna, Counterweight

  #hauntings

• Once man’s machines grind to a halt, the maddening cacophony of civilization will finally fall silent. A great peace will stretch across Earth, welcomed by blankets of beautiful flowers and heralded by the soft sounds of leaves rustling in the wind.

  — Shirakawa Marina, UFO Mushroom Invasion

  #utopia

• “William, everybody on Earth is homosexual. Except for a thousand or so; veterans and incurables.”

  “A billion perfectly adjusted homosexuals.”

  — Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

  #the-future-🌈

• Isidore said, “I think Buster Friendly and Mercerism are fighting for control of our psychic souls.”

  — Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  #attention-economy

• “Maybe we should.” He had never thought of it before, had never felt any empathy on his own part toward the androids he killed. Always he had assumed that throughout his psyche he experienced the android as a clever machine—as in his conscious view. And yet, in contrast to Phil Resch, a difference had manifested itself. And he felt instinctively that he was right. Empathy toward an artificial construct? he asked himself. Something that only pretends to be alive? But Luba Luft had seemed genuinely alive; it had not worn the aspect of a simulation.

  — Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  #ai-psychosis