Editors From England

"All over the world there must be far-reaching changes in animal behavior and habitat; if only one could have another life in which to chart it all....Ah, well, that’s not a fruitful thing to wish, is it?"

"I’ve no objection to morality, except that it’s obsolete."

"Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to overconsume."

"“Sounds to me as if you want journalists,” Timberlane said. “No, sir, we require steady men with integrity. This is not a scoop, it’s a way of life.”"

"That’s one thing about these religious boys—they reckon that if they are on God’s side, then the enemy must be on the devil’s, and so they have no qualms about giving it to ’em hot and strong."

"Let’s have a toast—to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or assholes they have!"

"What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?"

"Perhaps the first fire, the first tool, the first wheel, the first carving in a limestone cave, had each possessed a symbolic rather than a practical value, had each been pressed to serve distortion rather than reality. It was a sort of madness that had driven man from his humble sites on the edges of the woods into towns and cities, into arts and wars, into religious crusades, into martyrdom and prostitution, into dyspepsia and fasting, into love and hatred, into this present cul-de-sac; it had all come about in pursuit of symbols. In the beginning was the symbol, and darkness was over the face of the Earth."

"The hardship of it was a pleasure. Life was a pleasure; he looked back at its moments, many of them as shrouded in mist as the opposite bank of the Thames. Objectively, many of them held only misery, fear, confusion; but afterward, and even at the time, he had known an exhilaration stronger than the misery, fear, or confusion. A fragment of belief came to him from another epoch: Cogito ergo sum. For him that had not been true; his truth had been: Sentio ergo sum. I feel, so I exist. He enjoyed this fearful, miserable, confused life, and not only because it made more sense than nonlife. He could never explain that to anyone."

"It’s a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn’t; it’s something that goes on inside us."

"One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backward in time."

"In the extraordinary ancestral compost heap of your unconscious mind, I have burrowed too long."

"It [i.e., his look] held the fatal mixture of stupidity and cunning that lurks at the bottom of all evil."

"Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!"

"To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important."

"Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth."

"Frank's chromosome conquered everywhere. Peace was guaranteed. By the end of another century's ruthless intermarriage, Russia and Asia were engulfed as thoroughly as Europe, and by the same loving methods. Billions of people: one consciousness."

"Many modifications in private and public life took place. Privacy ceasing to exist, all new houses were glass-built, curtains abolished, walls pulled down. Police went, the entire legal structure vanished overnight — a man does not litigate against himself. A parody of Parliament remained, to deal with foreign affairs, but party politics, elections, leaders in newspapers (even newspapers themselves) were scrapped."

"Frank's chromosome was now breeding as true as ever. Blood group, creed, colour of skin — nothing was proof against it. The numbers with shared consciousness, procreating for all they were worth, trebled every generation."

"Many Franks of the sixteenth generation were killed in the muck of the trenches, he died not once but many times, developing an obsessive dread of war which never left him. By the time the Americans entered the war, he was turning his many thoughts to politics."

"The ambition of the original Frank had not died; it had grown subtler. It had become a wish to sample everything. The more bodily habitations there were with which to sample, the more tantalizing the idea seemed: for many experiences, belonging only to one brief era, are never repeated, and may be gone before they are perceived and tasted."

"These people, scattered all over the country, a few of them on the continent, were much like normal people. To outsiders, their relationship was not apparent; they certainly never revealed it; they never met. They became traders, captains of ships that traded with the Indies, soldiers, parliamentarians, agriculturists; some plunged into, some avoided, the constitutional struggles that dogged most of the seventeenth century. But they were all — male or female — Franks. They had the inexpressible benefit of their progenitor's one hundred and seventy-odd years' experience, and not only of his, but of all the other Franks. It was small wonder that, with few exceptions, whatever they did they prospered."

"Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness — but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies."

"Frank II had been back in the aptly named Mother Country for only a few months when a lady of his acquaintance presented him with Frank IV. Frank IV was a girl, christened Berenice. The state of coma which had ensnared Frank II for so long did not afflict Berenice, or any other of his descendants. Another tremendous adjustment in the shared consciousness had to be made. That also had its compensations; Frank was the first man ever really to appreciate the woman's point of view."

"As long as the chromosome reproduced itself in sufficient dominance, he was immortal! To him, in an unscientific age, the problem did not present itself quite like that; but he realized that there was a trait to be kept in the family."

"Frank II liked Spain. Philip's capital was gayer, warmer, and more sanitary than London. It was intoxicating to enjoy the best of both courts. It proved also extremely remunerative: the shared consciousness of Frank I and II was by far the quickest communicational link between the two rival countries, and as such was worth money. Not that Frank revealed his secret to a soul, but he let it be known he had a fleet of capable spies who moved without risk of detection between England and Spain. Burly Lord Burleigh beamed upon him. So did the Duke of Medina Sidonia."

"It was extraordinary to be in two places at once, doing two different things — extraordinary, but not confusing. He merely had two bodies which were as integrated as his two hands had been."

"A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank — though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it — not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament — but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought … all the infinite number of secret "how to's" that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level. A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness."

"The midwife bustled out to the four in the antechamber and announced that the Almighty (who had recently become a Protestant) had seen fit to bless milady with a son."

"That house, whatever it was, was the embodiment of all the coldness in his mind. Harley said to himself: "Whatever has been done to me, I've been cheated. Someone has robbed me of something so thoroughly I don't even know what it is. It's been a cheat, a cheat.…""

"There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!"

"Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he did not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed.… Somewhere that wasn't the house.…"

"Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should — not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances."

"They came, by what means he did not know, from outside, the vast abstraction that none of them had ever seen. He had a mental picture of a starry void in which men and monsters swam or battled, and then swiftly erased it. Such ideas did not conform with the quiet behavior of his companions; if they never spoke about outside, did they think about it?"

"Destiny can contain a few extra threads in her design and still accomplish her original aims."

"Moorcock is an erudite Left-anarchist and a giant of fantasy literature. Almost everything he’s written is of interest, but Hawkmoon is chosen here in honor of Moorcock having said about it: “In a spirit consciously at odds with the jingoism of the day, I chose a German for a hero and the British for villains.”"

"A whole tangle of series, possibly including everything Moorcock's written, not excluding his grocery lists, but I'm not sure; certainly includes most of his fantasy. Various subseries are declared complete every so often, as for example in an ad for the Last Elric Book in the current issue of F&SF; such declarations sometimes prove true, but on the other hand, I've seen several previous Last Elric Books."

"Thus woman trusts in man down all the years and so, as always, is betrayed."

"You are martyred, as woman is ever martyred, particularly if she seeks her own power."

"You’re as worthless as one of that decrepit mob. Lucifer has rejected you. Now mankind rejects you. Have the good taste, Sir, to accept a fact!"

"He had thought his wars over. Now he realized peace had been merely a lull."

"You may be abandoned by Satan, Sir, and I abandoned by God, but that does not put us in the same cart, nor even upon the same road."

"“Are you aware we anticipate the Apocalypse, von Bek?” “The obsession’s common enough, Montsorbier, amongst ignorant folk.”"

"We’ll build a world where Order shall prevail. A few more deaths are inconsequential, surely, if they guarantee us eternal life and absolute fulfillment?"

"I must believe you doomed to eternal life, but also to eternal repetition! Your true doom is simple to me. You lack brains, Sir."

"My own self-deception at least promised some kind of pleasure. Theirs offered nothing but terror and guilt."

"Redefine the terms by which Man views the world, and thus eventually you redefine the world itself."

"My bargain with God included the undertaking that I should play no direct part, merely supervise mankind’s self-redemption. Like yourself, my agents are those whose independence of thought is already well-established."

"Better wicked Lucifer for a master, thought I, than a pious Tyrant!"

"I guessed he experienced the terrible confusion of a true solipsist when the outer world impinges."