Virus Warning!!

“We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information. But being physically infected with a virulent strain of the Asherah virus makes you a whole lot more susceptible. The only thing that keeps these things from taking over the world is the Babel factor—the walls of mutual incomprehension that compartmentalize the human race and stop the spread of viruses

Snow Crash, chapter 57 - Neal Stephenson

Review - The Rise of Endymion (Dan Simmons)

Perfect. The 4 books are maybe the best sci-fi series you will ever read. Religion, politics, philosophy, humans, IA, aliens, sociology and the whole fucking universe in a story as big in sci-fi as the lord of the rings in fantasy. I've never read something like this. Absolutely epic-must-have reading.

 Rate: 10

I knew it!

A geisha in Vietnam? Y.T.’s grandpa, who was there for a while, told her that the Nipponese took over Vietnam during the war and treated it with the cruelty that was their trademark before we nuked them and they discovered that they were pacifists.

Snow Crash, chapter 29 - Neal Stephenson

And the best story ever ends....

“Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light,      

And precipices show untrodden green;

There is a budding morrow in midnight;      

There is triple sight in blindness keen …

The Rise of Endymion, chapter 33 - Dan Simmons

Be god fearing

“Well, there you have it,” the man with the glass eye says. Y.T. is supposed to be on her way to a Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates franchise. If she screws up this delivery, that means she’s double-crossing God, who may or may not exist, and in any case who is capable of forgiveness. The Mafia definitely exists and hews to a higher standard of obedience

Snow Crash, chapter 23 - Neal Stephenson

The path

“I think he’s fought to stay alive this long to finish those Cantos,” I say softly. “Now he never will.” Father Duré sighs. “No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.”

The Rise of Endymion, chapter 33 - Dan Simmons

Men and women

"It’s my late grandmother, may God have mercy on her soul,” she said, watching him look at the painting. “My role model.”

 “Why? Was she a programmer?” She just looked at him over the rotating pencil like, how slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions?

Snow Crash, chapter 7 - Neal Stephenson