Brian Aldiss Quotes on Life
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The day of the android has dawned.
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Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he did not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed.: Somewhere that wasn't the house.:
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A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank - though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it - not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament - but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought : all the infinite number of secret 'how to's' that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level. A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness.
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Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness - but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies.
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The ambition of the original Frank had not died; it had grown subtler. It had become a wish to sample everything. The more bodily habitations there were with which to sample, the more tantalizing the idea seemed: for many experiences, belonging only to one brief era, are never repeated, and may be gone before they are perceived and tasted.
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Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world.
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'You and I are real, Teddy, aren't we?' The bear's eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. 'You and I are real, David.' It specialized in comfort.