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Oscar, so far as I know, your culture is the only semicivilized one in which love is not recognized as the highest art and given the serious study it deserves.
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The Emperor is sole source of Imperial law, sole judge, sole executive — and does very little and has no way to enforce his rulings. What he or she does have is enormous prestige from a system that has worked for seven millennia. This non-system holds together by having no togetherness, no uniformity, never seeking perfection, no Utopias — just answers good enough to get by, with lots of looseness and room for many ways and attitudes. Local affairs are local. Infanticide? — they're your babies, your planet. PTAs, movie censorship, disaster relief — the Empire is ponderously unhelpful.
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The one thing that stood out as this empirical way of running an empire grew up was that the answer to most problems was: Don't do anything. Always King Log, never King Stork — "Live and let live." "Let well enough alone." "Time is the best physician." "Let sleeping dogs lie." "Leave them alone and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them."Even positive edicts of the Imperium were usually negative in form: Thou Shalt Not Blow Up Thy Neighbors' Planet. (Blow your own if you wish.) Hands off the guardians of the Gates. Don't demand justice, you too will be judged.Above all, don't put serious problems to a popular vote.
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Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
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You were the key, first to be found, then ground to fit. You yourself act, you're never a puppet, or you could never have won. She was the only one who could nudge and wheedle such a man and place him where he would act; no lesser person than She could handle the scale of hero She needed. So She searched until She found him ... and honed him fine. Tell me, why did you take up the sword? It's not common in America.
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Your country has a system free enough to let its heroes work at their trade. It should last a long time — unless its looseness is destroyed from inside.
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American novels
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An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey; I have none.
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“Oscar, when you get home, don’t expect too much of your feminine compatriots. You’re sure to be disappointed and the poor dears aren’t to blame. American women, having been conditioned out of their sex instincts, compensate by compulsive interest in rituals over the dead husk of sex...and each one is sure she knows ‘intuitively’ the right ritual for conjuring the corpse. She knows and nobody can tell her any different...especially a man unlucky enough to be in bed with her. So don’t try. You will either make her furious or crush her spirit. You’ll be attacking that most Sacred of Cows: the myth that women know all about sex, just from being women.”Rufo had frowned. “The typical American female is sure that she has genius as a couturière, as an interior decorator, as a gourmet cook, and, always, as a courtesan. Usually she is wrong on four counts. But don’t try to tell her so....But don’t misunderstand me; it evens out. The American male is convinced that he is a great warrior, a great statesman, and a great lover. Spot checks prove that he is as deluded as she is.”
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“This is a crazy sort of country, you must admit. Utterly insane.”“Mmmm...” he answered. “Have you ever been in Washington, D. C.?”“Well—” I grinned wryly. “Touché!”
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Center is the capital planet of the Twenty Universes. But Star was not "Empress" and it is not an empire. I'll go on calling her "Star" as hundreds of names were hers and I'll call it an "empire" because no other word is close, and I'll refer to "emperors" and "empresses" — and to the Empress, my wife.Nobody knows how many universes there are. Theory places no limit: any and all possibilities in unlimited number of combinations of "natural" laws, each sheaf appropriate to its own universe. But this is just theory and Occam's Razor is much too dull. All that is known in Twenty Universes is that twenty have been discovered, that each has its own laws, and that most of them have planets, or sometimes "places," where human beings live. I won't try to say what lives elsewhere. The Twenty Universes include many real empires. Our Galaxy in our universe has its stellar empires — yet so huge is our Galaxy that our human race may never meet another, save through the Gates that link the universes. Some planets have no known Gates. Earth has many and that is its single importance; otherwise it rates as a backward slum.
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Ch. 1
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Ch. 1
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Ch. 1
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Ch. 1