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Greg Bear

Greg Bear Biography

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“[Edward Teller} had “the most important kvestion of all”. Leaning closer, he said, “Vill you be villing to vork on veapons?” Unbidden, images from Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove leaped to mind. But Teller had impressed me as a deep, reflective man. I said I would—occasionally, at least. I had grown up deep in the shadow of the Cold War. My father was a career army officer, and I had spent six years living with my family in occupied post-war Japan and Germany. It seemed to me that the best, indeed the only, way to avoid strategic conventional war, whose aftermath I had seen in shattered Tokyo and Berlin. .... That afternoon began my long, winding involvement with modern science and fiction, the inevitable clash of the noble and imaginary elements in both science and fiction with the gritty and practical. I have never settled emotionally the tensions between these modes of thinking. Growing up amid the shattered ruins of Germany and Japan, with a father who had fought through World War II and then spent long years occupying the fallen enemy lands, impressed me with the instability of even advanced nations. The greatest could blunder the most.”

WarScienceScience FictionEdward TellerLarry Niven
Book:New Legends
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“We may exist in all universes, but 'hear' only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs.”

WorldNeedsMayLongDesireSongUniverseDifficultDifferencesDistancePracticalsLimitationJust OneVibrationsValve
Author:Greg Bear
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“To translate kinesics or paralinguistic messages into words is likely to introduce gross falsification due not merely to the human propensity for trying to falsify statements about "feelings" and relationship and to the distortions which arise whenever the products of one system of coding are dissected onto the premises of another, but especially to the fact that all such translation must give to the more or less unconscious and involuntary message the appearance of conscious intent.”

GivingTryingHumansFactsFeelingsProductsMessagesConsciousAppearanceDuesAriseStatementsUnconsciousIntroducingTranslateGrossTranslationsPremisesDistortionPropensityInvoluntaryFalsification
Author:Greg Bear
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“Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.”

ShouldLongReasonStoriesFriendshipTeachInspireWillingModelsInspiredBrilliantRaysTolerateCharmingTerrificInfluentialBe InspiredLong FriendshipBradbury
Author:Greg Bear
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