people-from-manitoba

"The hopes and dreams of our faith community are to further engage our young people in our mission as a Church. Our young people often have expressed their desire to know and understand the unique spirituality of our 1000-year-old Kyivan tradition. The question remains: how do we live our lives as modern day Christians in a modern day Australia, and at the same time preserving our unique spirituality?"

"Time, talent, and treasure. If people give their time to God’s work, that’s very important, and use the talents that God gives you, not for yourself, it’s for the greater glory of God, but you use your talents. Everybody's got different kind of talents, but you use some of your talents for the greater glory of building up the Kingdom of God on Earth."

"[F]acts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too. How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue? ... [C]ollectively, we don’t say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.” ... If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”"

"That’s what being human means: to be master of your own fate."

"“I haven’t organized my life as a narrative, you know. I’m not sure you’ll understand.” “As listeners, we are not required to understand,” said Qiingi. “Only to care.”"

"“You know I was once a human being, too, Doran. I remember how hard it was to marshal all the resources I needed to cure myself of the affliction. I also remember, quite clearly, how I always told people I had no interest in self-deification. It was a useful and sometimes necessary shield against interference.” “Blow off,” said Doran. “Unless you have some specific threat you want to use on me.” Choronzon laughed. “Not a threat. Just curiosity as to why someone so violently opposed to improving on the human model should decide to go against all his principles.” “Sometimes,” said Doran icily, “mature people do things they don’t want to do. It’s called following higher principles. But someone without mortal concerns, say, like yourself, wouldn’t understand that.”"

"“Humans become violent when they feel their interest are threatened.” Galas scowled. “They were never threatened! Parliament is a rumor mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as ‘policy.’”"

"The richest billionaire has to realize that the gods next door take no more notice of him than he would a bug."

"“We’re all pretending; that’s what events like this are all about.” “Why are we doing it at all?” “To fit it. Better that we be there to be spoken to than absent to be spoken about.”"

"She looked up at the towering wisdom and felt a sudden love for it—as if these books were family."

"“Then you have no more wish to rule? The country needs you now more than ever.” She shook her head. “I’ve been crushed under the weight of power all my life. I think I’m going to enjoy missing it.” She laughed at the lightness with which she dismissed royal power. Every moment was a surprise, these days. She hoped that that feeling would never end."

"“Something’s wrong.” Axel shrugged. “That statement probably applies to every second I’ve spent on this blasted world.”"

"Idiots. They were losing everything because of their short-sightedness. Maybe they deserved to lose it."

"They see something they may never have seen before: a normal human reacting normally to a traumatic situation. Livia, these people have been insulated within inscape their whole lives. They have lived in a world where their merest whim could be granted with a thought. Reality has always conformed to their desires—never the other way around. Now they find themselves in a world that obstinately refuses to change itself to fit their imagination. They literally have no idea how to respond."

"But what good's abundance if nobody can experience it?"

"Even the gods fight boredom in vain."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature."

"“All sound is music,” he had said, “and there is no place without sound.”"

"When she looked around, she saw the same expression of mindless fear in the eyes of the men with her. They were all in the same boat—carried forward by habits of training, minds blank with fear hence too stupid to sensibly turn and run. It was this stupor of fear that would later be counted as courage."

"“So why did you do it?” August stared at the ceiling pensively. “It gets easier to risk your life as you get older. I think women understand that when they have children. Suddenly they know they would give their life for their child, and it doesn’t bother them. With men it’s different, but we…trade our allegiance in the same way. At some point, if you’ve grown up at all, you have to decide that something outside yourself is more important than you are. Otherwise you’ll be a miserable bastard, and you’ll die screaming.” He closed one eye and peered at Jordan. “That make sense?” “I don’t know,” Jordan said uncomfortably. “You get perspective. You can stand outside your own death, a little. Not while you’re dying, though.”"

"Just because something is convincing, that does not make it true. It is merely convincing."

"“Which do you prefer?” Armiger leaned over her and kissed her cheek. “Which what do I prefer?” “Do you prefer making love or reading?” Her voice held a teasing note, but he had learned there were frequently hidden needs behind her teasing questions. “To read is to make love to the world,” he said. “But to make love to a woman is to feel like the world is reading you.” She smiled, not comprehending, and fell asleep."

"“It’s not that simple.” “Ah! That phrase is Male for ‘I’m afraid to.’”"

"He was acutely aware of how little attention the people who lived here actually paid to their immediate environment. They seemed cut off from their own senses, cocooned away from their bodies in the infinite spaces of inscape. Cybernetic realities were more real to most people now than their own lives, it seemed. And any connection between those internal spaces and the physical world seemed entirely accidental."

"“What if they don’t surrender?” “My Lady,” he said, “you never ask that question after you’ve gone to war.”"

"Her own sincerity returned to her now like the remembrance of a crime."

"The being was trying to get him to think about what he was saying, not just recite."

"In such a way she had done what her people prized above all else: she had given her respect to those different from herself."

"“I am the Government,” she said. “I am a force of omniscience and unparalleled power within the human part of the Archipelago. I am a public-domain distributed artificial intelligence. I have made all human institutions redundant, for I am the personal and intimate friend of each and every one of the trillion humans under my domain. I am the selfless advocate of each of them, from the lowliest to the greatest. The only problem is...Well, nobody listens to me much anymore.”"

"“The fact is, there’s no such thing as an ultimate state of consciousness. It’s a myth; sentience has meaning only insofar as it’s connected into the physical world... If you’d like to see it, here’s a view of the Omega Point.” It gestured to open a large inscape window in the sky. Instantly Doran’s head was filled with an undifferentiated roar; white noise matched in the window by endless video snow. Choronzon laughed. “The more information there is in a signal, the more it resembles noise. You’re looking at infinite information density, gentlemen, a signal so packed with information that it has become noise. These idiots pushed so far in one direction that they ended up at the opposite pole... Perhaps the fanatics of Omega Point had gotten their wish, but if so they had been mistaken in thinking that the Absolute was something that hadn’t been there all along. Absolute meaning, it seemed, was no different from no meaning at all."

"Each technology equated to some human value or set of values, she saw. She’d known that. But on Earth, in the Archipelago and everywhere else, technologies came first, and values changed to accommodate them. Under the locks, values were the keys to access or shut away technologies... The locks proclaimed that there were no neutral technologies. The devices and methods people used didn’t just represent certain values—they were those values, in some way."

"Our whole life we’ve lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary—not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I’m asking you to do it again. See what’s really going on here. See what’s real."

"What’s real is what’s valuable. Everything else is just an illusion."

"“The great commandment of the narratives is that your life must be meaningful,” said Charon. “If knowing the truth strips the meaning away, then the truth must be suppressed.”"

"Only the dead are free of the influence of others."

"“Technologies are control systems,” she said. “They dictate your reality.”"

"In the end, her written ideology, the philosophy and new morals she had preached, were all means to an end. That end could never be reached; Armiger had taught her that. If so, then what mattered their disappointment, their disillusionment? They would hate her for leaving them alive, but they would be alive, and a life lived in bitterness was still better than a death colored by useless fanaticism."

"She started threatening the stability of the ruling classes, at least in their own eyes. No ruler who does that ever stands for long."

"His lantern guttered and finally went out. “Shit,” he said, shaking it. “Excuse me.” “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” she asked, chiding. “No, ma’am. I’m afraid of what’s in it.”"

"“It’s time to abandon the plans of the entity that enslaved me all these centuries,” he said. “And time to start making my own.”"

"I believe instinctively in a God for whom I am prepared to search."

"Because he was a reader, a writer, and a thinker, van Vogt regarded himself as an intellectual. But if he was an intellectual, it was not of the usual sort. He wasn't silver-tongued or swift-witted. He had very little ability to remember a precise fact or an exact niggle, and no talent at all for linear thought and logical analysis. He was not a conventional man of reason. Rather, van Vogt's usual method was to fix on some question or subject in a highly single-minded way — to surround it and dwell upon it and absorb it. He might get nowhere with a problem for the longest time, but then at last the penny would drop and some insight would pop into his mind. When van Vogt had enough insights accumulated on a topic, they would assemble themselves into what he would come to think of as a system — a methodology or mode of approach that had its own consistency, if only in the manner in which it was applied by him. In later days, van Vogt would even take pride in describing himself as "Mr. System.""

"The truth of the matter seems to be that van Vogt's withdrawal into himself took place over a considerable period of time. The beginning of it may lie in the fact that young Alfred was a highly idealistic small town boy with a number of wide-eyed notions about right and truth and justice in his head. When the world failed to conform to his expectations, he found that a substantial shock. Beyond this, it was also true that Alfred was a boy who had something a little strange and left-footed about him. He didn't think or talk exactly like everyone else, and reaction to this may have had its effect on his developing personality."

"One night, in a fever dream, I sit up and say to the walls, "Hey, how about A. E. Van Vogt?" When I heard myself say it, I realized I was feverish, and I lay back down again quickly. I'm malaise that can cause symptoms like that should not be fooled with. But the next day, the thought persisted. I argued with myself. I said, first of all, Van is in the middle of a bunch of new novels and won't have the time. Yeah, but what a weird story you two could turn out, I answered. Sure, sure I agreed, but why in the world would the man who wrote "Slan" and "The Weapon Shops of Isher" and "The World of Null-A" and books that were classics before I could hold a pencil properly, want to link up with me, ya snotnose. Yeah, but what a weird story you two would turn out, I answered. But we don't write anything alike, I argued. Van thinks in these blocks of concepts, and he's hip to all kinds of technology and stuff what I don't know a spanner from a toilet plunger; what are you trying to do, make me look like some kind of nitwit, approaching a man like Van Vogt? Yeah, but want a weird — So I called Van and suggested it, thinking he would drop me down an airshaft somewhere but damned if he didn't dig the idea."

"Alfred E. van Vogt, since the appearance of his first two stories — "Black Destroyer" and "Discord in Scarlet" (Astounding Science Fiction, July and December 1939) the most memorable debut in the long history of the genre — has been a giant. The words seminal and germinal leap to mind. Sadly, at this juncture. the words tragedy and farewell also insinuate themselves. … Van is still with us, as I write this, in June of 1999, slightly less than fifty years since I first encountered van Vogt prose in a January 1950 issue of Startling Stories, but Van is gone. He is no longer with us. … Because the great and fecund mind of A.E. van Vogt has fallen into the clutches of that pulp thriller demon, Alzheimer's. Van is gone. … Anyone's demise or vanishment is in some small way tragic but the word "tragedy" requires greater measure for its use. … Van' s great mind now gone. Tragedy. The ultimate tragic impropriety visited on as good a man as ever lived. A gentle. soft spoken man who was filled with ideas and humor and courtesy and kindness. Not even those who were not aficionados of Van's writing could muster a harsh word about him as a human being. He was as he remains now, quietly and purposefully, a gentleman. But make no mistake about this: the last few decades for him were marred by the perfidious and even mean spirited and sometimes criminal acts of poltroons and self-aggrandizing mountebanks and piss-ants into whose clutches he fell just before the thug Alzheimer got him. … I came late to the friendship with Van and Lydia. Perhaps only twenty-five or so years. But the friendship continues, and at least I was able to make enough noise to get Van the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, which was presented to him in full ceremony during on of the last moments when he was cogent and clearheaded enough understand that finally, as last, dragged kicking and screaming to honor him, the generation that learned from what he did and what he had created had, at last, fessed up to his importance. Naturally, others took credit for his getting the award. They postured and spewed all the right platitudes. Some of them were the same ones who had said to me — during the five years it took to get them to act honorably — "we'd have given it to him sooner if you hadn't made such a fuss." Yeah. Sure. And pandas'll fly out of my ass."

"The Golden Age of SF is universally dated from the July 1939, issue of Astounding because that's when "Black Destroyer," A. E. van Vogt's first SF story, appeared. Isaac Asimov's first story also appeared in the same month but nobody — as Asimov himself admits — noticed it. People noticed "Black Destroyer," though, and they continued to notice the many other stories that van Vogt wrote over the following decade. … What as much as anything set van Vogt off from other SF writers (of his day and later) was the ability to suggest vastness beyond comprehension. He worked with not only in space and time, but with the mind. Van Vogt knew that to describe the indescribable would have been to make it ludicrous, and that at best description turns the inconceivable into the pedestrian. More than any other SF writer, van Vogt succeeded in creating a sense of wonder in his readers by hinting at the shadowed immensities beyond the walls of human perception."

"I read Harlan Ellison's stories and also John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov-all the SF classics, whatever I got my hands on."

"At the end of June in 1939 I took a bus east to New York to attend the first World Science Fiction convention. On the bus with me I took the June of Astounding Science-Fiction in which the short story by A.E. van Vogt appeared. It was an astonishing encounter. In that same issue with him were C. L. Moore and Ross Rocklynne, a fantastic issue to take with me on that long journey, for I was still a poor unpublished writer selling newspapers on a street corner for ten dollars a week and hoping, someday, to be an established writer myself, but that was still two years off. On the way I drank in the words of A.E. Van Vogt and was stunned by what I saw there. He became a deep influence for the next year. As it turned out, I didn't become A.E. Van Vogt, no one else could, and when I finally met him was pleased to see that the man was as pleasant to be with as were his stories. I knew him over a long period of years and he was a kind and wonderful gentleman, a real asset to the Science Fantasy Society in L.A., where there are a lot of strange people. A.E. Van Vogt was not strange, he was kind. He gave me advice and helped me along the road to becoming what I wanted to become."

"He originated many of the themes we now take for granted: how many monsters have infested spaceships — since "The Black Destroyer"? And although "Slan" — that wish-fulfillment dream of all S.F. fans (interesting resonance there!) was not the first superman story, it Is the one which has had the greatest impact."

"The weapon shops were founded more than two thousand years ago by a man who decided that the incessant struggle for power of different groups was insane and the civil and other wars must stop forever. It was a time when the world had just emerged from a war in which more than a billion people had died and he found thousands of people who agreed to follow him. His idea was nothing less than that whatever government was in power should not be overthrown. But that an organization should be set up which would have one principal purpose — to ensure that no government ever again obtained complete power over its people. A man who felt himself wronged should be able to go somewhere to buy a defensive gun. You cannot imagine what a great forward step that was. Under the old tyrannical governments it was frequently a capital offense to be found in possession of a blaster or a gun. … What gave the founder the idea was the invention of an electronic and atomic system of control which made it possible to build indestructible weapon shops and to manufacture weapons that could only be used for defense. That last ended all possibility of weapon shop guns being used by gangsters and other criminals and morally justified the entire enterprise. For defensive purposes a weapon shop gun is superior to an ordinary or government weapon. It works on mind control and leaps to the hand when wanted. It provides a defensive screen against other blasters, though not against bullets but since it is so much faster, that isn't important."