Debating in A Vacuum
“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, all one color. No key to where the pieces fit in.”
Theory
Thoughts on applied semiotics and hermeneutics.
Ubik
"Every hypothesis that Joe and his teammates posit, every interpretation of how this semiosphere works, is frustrated."
Engine Summer
"Is this an actual thing I’m putting together, or am I fooling myself?"
Babel-17
"Babel-17 is a language of dense precision; each word opens up into a vast idea-complex."
Cat’s Cradle
“No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
The Soft Machine
"Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine"
The Einstein Intersection
Myths can and will control us… unless we study how myths work.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
"Puzzling over cultural fragments that we cannot immediately comprehend…"
The Man with Six Senses
"We are surrounded by imperceptible, patterned forces that subtly guide our behavior…"
Embassytown
"The Ariekei's discovery of the myriad possibilities of signifier/signified connections proves catastrophic."
Solaris
"Is true understanding even possible? What does understanding imply?"
Odd John
"He devised strange shapes which epitomized for him the tragedy of Homo sapiens, and the promise of his own kind."
Friday
"Durned if I didn’t begin to find connections!"
The Glass Bead Game
The game is a difficult and rewarding "exercise in deconstruction and decoding, pattern recognition, and patterning."
The Sweetest Hangover
“If there’s a cure for this, I don’t want it!"