Book Notes of Interest

Book Notes of Interest

Mining the Sky

People to research: Konstantin Tsilokovskii, Robert Goddard, Herman Oberth, JD Bernal

P10 Jupiter / Saturn too large gravity well to escape from; Uranus / Neptune better for H3 extraction

P 44 glass bonds with other minerals making it harder to get the minerals wanted

P 75-77 ‘Landing Talk’

P 78 Ceres History

P 103 get H2O/fuel

P 105 ‘Thrust talk’

P 180 Mars / Phobos space elevator

P 185 Asteroid belt

P 239 Future hops (last chapter)

Shadow and Claw

P14 It is a profound mistake to believe we must know of such things to be influenced by them. The sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge. Rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.

P 58 One can’t found a novel theology on Nothing and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction

P 60 Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.

P 110 No intellect is needed to see these figures who wait beyond the void of death – every child is aware of them, blazing with glories dark or bright, wrapped in authority older than the universe. They are the stuff of our earliest dreams, as of our dying visions. Rightly we feel our lives guided by them and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence. The difficulty lies in learning that we ourselves encompass forces equally great. We say ‘I will’ or ‘I will not’ and imagine ourselves (though we obey the orders of some prosaic person every day) our own masters, when the truth is our masters are sleeping. One wakes within us and we are ridden like beasts, though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves.

P 119 master of power – transcendence of reality; negation of time

P 119 she possessed the hopeful hopeless courage of the poor

P 120 I have to admit I’ve never understood why people always think ordinary people have to have their lust purified. In my experience, they control it well enough by themselves, and just about every day, too. What most of us need is to find someone to unbottle it with.

P 128 Space/light talk (mirrors)

P 184 A crowd is not the sum of the individual members who compose it. It is a species of animal without language or real consciousness born when they gather, dying when they depart

P 184 Such people (not poor) are slower to violence than the poor, but once roused are far more dangerous because they are not accustomed to being overawed by force, and despite the demagogues, have a good deal more courage.

The Demon Haunted World

P 8 Men call epilepsy divine, merely because they don’t understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end to the divine.

P 12 Thomas Grey – where ignorance is bliss, is folly to be wise.

P 115 Diotima tells Plato: “Everything demonic is intermediate between God and mortal. God has no contact with man. Only through the demonic is there intercourse and conversation between man and gods, whether in the waking state or during sleep.

Plato: No human nature invested with supreme power is able to order human affairs and not overflow with insolence and wrong.

Demon means ‘knowledge’ in greek

P 118 Nightmare – mare – demon who sits on chest; dybbuks – jewish demon

P 235 Mark Twain: The power which a man’s imagination has over his body to heal it or make it sick is a force which none of us are born without. The first man had it, the last one will possess it.

Conversations at the End of Time

P 48 Isaiah scripture – heaven on earth (or new earth)

P 58 “parovsia”

P 104 Tat Tvam asi – you are that

P 106 Hindu avatar list

P 109 “True power, power that is just and justified, is not visable.”

P 113 normal person

P 117 creation myths

P 130 Oedipus analogy of science

P 145 What question does the Sphinx ask us?

P 153 light year; distance plus time: time unique, space multiple? Siamese twins

P 162 Chimera – utter fools; ‘religions do not ask questions, they answer them’; science losing arrogance

P 180 Adam Kadmon

Fire in the Deep

P 52 When 2 people have a clear understanding of power and betrayal, then betrayal itself becomes almost impossible

P 77 transsapience

P 92 God / various levels / / / / / / / / depths and degrees of clarity and understanding

P 134 Quiet does not mean submission; it could mean stalking

P 140 students commonly surpass teachers – good teachers

The Postman

P 16 Hope is an addiction

Foundation; Foundation and Empire

P 6 Childlikeness comes naturally to a man as to a child

P 33 Planetwide inertia to change

P 188 Pioneers are never patriots; Religion able to control whole populations; use of religious training

P 196 Trickery and deals : ‘only one of us is a fool’

P 214 Missionary trespass – trader help / no help; Man’s law’s – higher laws

P 15 Hedge against the forgetfulness of the centuries

P 140 The convolutions of his brain performed the mental equivalent of a smile

Dhalgren

P 23 …It has to do with freedom. Do anything you want, which does funny things to you. Very quickly, surprisingly quickly, you become exactly who you are. If you are really for that, that’s where it’s at

P 39 alive with darkness, textures of silence

Last and First Men

P 7 appeal to reason and humanity speech (while getting bombed)

P 12 awakening of reason – still ignorant / betrayed

P 12-15 Europe heals and thoughts

P 38-39 US/China difference *

P 41 China – will for the ‘prestige of the culture’; Chinese ‘could actually enjoy the cultural wealth of the race’ (as opposed to American bankruptcy of values)

P 72 decline

P 75 Orion lounged unimpressed

P 89 Patagonia Cult of Youth

P 103 we are common people, but we must become great

P 181 Sadism of monster creation (4^th to 5^th men)

P 187 *Man is animal, yet uniquely gifted

P 209 *The higher the mind’s development the more it discovers in the universe to occupy it

P 210 art as focuser – microscope / telescope

P 238 …all the desperate “isms” by which mind seeks to blur the severe outline of truth; recurrent fashions of comfort seeking fantasy and cold intelligence

P 275-9 Group mind / racial mind

P 281 *Mystics are confident that the universe is perfect, we are sure (content) only that it is beautiful

P 281-7 **Cosmology

P 303 Last man speech – (for Adem?)

Misc

Life has no value; life is value; part of a chain, everlasting and ever extending