True, you’re not a slave. You’re worse off than that by a long, long way. You’re a predatory beast shut up in a cage of which the bars aren’t fixed, solid objects you can gnaw at or in despair batter against with your head until you get punch-drunk and stop worrying. No, those bars are the competing members of your own species, at least as cunning as you on average, forever shifting around so you can’t pin them down, liable to get in your way without the least warning, disorienting your personal environment until you want to grab a gun or an axe and turn mucker.
John BrunnerNext, the stalled cars had their windows opaqued with a cheap commercial compound used for etching glass, and slogans were painted on their doors. Some were long: THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU'RE KILLING ME!
John BrunnerTag: pollution
Latro, California: "Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!" "Take these pills and come back in three days if you're not better."
Parkington, Texas: "Terrible diarrhea..." "Take these pills..."
Hainesport, Louisiana: "Terrible..." "Take..."
Baker Bay, Florida...
Washington, DC...
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
New York, New York...
Boston, Massachusetts...
Chicago, Illinois: "Doctor, I know it's Sunday, but the kid's in such a terrible state - you've got to help me!" "Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye."
EVERYWHERE, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size to take a baby dead from acute infantile enteritis.
She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: "And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects!
John BrunnerTag: humour pollution pesticides
The walls were chipped and needed paint. The windows were mostly okay but one pane was blocked with cardboard. There were fleas the exterminator couldn't kill and rats that scrabbled in the walls and mice who left droppings like a cocked snook and roaches that thrived on insecticide, even the illegal kinds.
John BrunnerTag: poverty cockroaches pests
We are told that "the meek shall inherit the earth." It follows that the meek are chosen of God. I shall try to be meek, not because I want the earth - you can keep it, after the way you've fucked it around it's not worth having - but because I too should like to be chosen of God. QED.
Besides, I like animals better than you bastards.
Tag: pollution austin-train
It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with. So SHUT UP, do you hear me? SHUT UP!
John BrunnerTag: overload
Best if the driver didn't have to get hurt. Though having been fool enough to volunteer for army service, of course, and worse still, having been fool enough to accept orders unquestioningly from a machine...
But everybody did that. Everybody, all the time. Otherwise none of this would have been possible.
Similarly, none of it would have had to happen.
We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better.
John BrunnerDamn right I voted for him. But if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn't have cast a vote—I’d have cast a brick.
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