June 07, 2004

Peace on Earth

Just finished Stanislaw Lem's Peace on Earth and it's full of potentially loaded philosophical statements and other quiddities-as you'd probably expect. For instance:

If you want to know what happened to me, you'll have to read this whole story, word by word, even when it doesn't make sense. The sense will come, though probably not completely because you can get to the bottom of it only by callotomy, just as you can't know what it's like to be an otter, say, or a turtle without being turned into an otter or a turtle, and then you can't communicate it because animals don't talk or write.
...the professor broke off with a groan because I kicked him in the kneecap. "Sorry, it wasn't me, it was my left leg," I said quickly. "I didn't mean to..."

And my favorite:

There is a real groundswell of good will, with disagreement only about who is standing in its way. But there is no disagreement that the enemies of brotherly love should be exterminated root and branch.
Posted by Matt Weiner at June 7, 2004 11:16 AM
Comments