#0053: DORSAI!, by Gordon R. Dickson

[orbitaldiamonds]

DORSAI!
by Gordon R. Dickson

p.vi DORSAI! is an exposition of what Basil Liddell-Hart termed the Strategy of Indirection. (I do not imply a necessarily direct connection.) Instead of overwhelming one's opponent by brute force, the exponent of indirection maneuvers so that his opponent has to attack or (better yet) is checkmated without a battle.

p.7 Why make a cake of nothing but icing?

p.43 "Phase shift in one standard hour and twenty minutes. Passengers are advised to take their medication now and accomplish the shift while asleep, for convenience."
     "Have you swallowed a pill yet?" asked arDell.
     "No, not yet," said Donal.
     "But you will?"
     "Of course." Donal examined him with interest. "Why not?"
     "Doesn't taking medication to avoid the discomfort of a phase shift strike you as a form of cowardice?" asked arDell. "Doesn't it?"
     "That's foolish," said Donal. "Like saying it's cowardly to wear clothes to keep you warm and comfortable, or to eat, to keep from starving."

p.88 "very dark of skin and eye"

p.131 "Shai Dorsai!"

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#0054: Ember Series #1: The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau

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Ember Series #1
The City of Ember
by Jeanne DuPrau

p.34 Lina sat in the big armchair and waited. No one came. She got up and wandered around the room. She bent over The Book of the City of Ember and read a few sentences: “The citizens of Ember may not have luxuries, but the foresight of the Builders, who filled the storerooms at the beginning of time, has ensured that they will always have enough, and enough is all that a person of wisdom needs.”

p.34-35 She flipped a few pages. “The Gathering Hall clock,” she read, “measures the hours of night and day. It must never be allowed to run down. Without it, how would we know when to work and when to go to school? How would the light director know when to turn the lights on and when to turn the lights off again? It is the job of the timekeeper to wind the clock every week and to place the date sign in Harken Square every day. The timekeeper must perform these duties faithfully.”
     Lina knew that not all timekeepers were faithful as they should be. She’d heard of one, some years ago, who often forgot to change the date sign, so that it might say, “Wednesday, Week 38, Year 227” for several days in a row. There had even been timekeepers who forgot to wind the clock, so that it might stand at noon or at midnight for hours at a time, causing a very long day or a very long night. The result was that no one really knew anymore exactly what day of the week it was, or exactly how many years it had been since the building of the city--they called this year 241, but it might have been 245 or 239 or 250. As long as the clock’s deep boom rang out every hour, and the lights went on and off more or less regularly, it didn’t seem to matter.”

p.50 “bald as a peeled potato”

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