Heather's Library

Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil
by James Luceno

p.22 In peaceful times Anakin might have been able to bridle his rage, but now he relied on it to drive him forward, to transform him into the person he needed to be."

p.49-50 Bail motioned to the identichip he had already slotted in the scanner. "It’s all there, Sergeant. I’m a member in good standing of the Republic Senate."
     The helmeted noncom glanced at the display screen, then looked down at Bail. "So it says. But I’m still going to need to see further identification."
     Bail sighed in exasperation and fished into the breast pocket of his brocaded tunic for his credit chip.
     The new Coruscant, he thought.
     Faceless, blaster-wielding soldiers on the shuttle landing platforms, in the plazas, arrayed in front of banks, hotels, theaters, wherever beings gathered or mingled. Scanning the crowds, stopping anyone who fir the current possible terrorist profile, conducting searches of individuals, belongings, residences. Not on a whim, because the cloned troopers didn’t operate like that. They answered merely to their training, and the duties they performed were for the good of the Republic.
     One heard rumors about antiwar demonstrations being put down by force; of disappearances and seizures of private property. Proof of such abuses of power rarely surfaced, and was quickly discredited.
     The omnipresence of the soldiers seemed to bother Bail more than it did his few friends on Courscant or his peers in the Senate. He had tried to attribute his agitation to the fact that he hailed from pacific Alderaan, but that explained only some of it. What bothered him most was the ease with which the majority of Courscanti had acclimated to the changes. Their willingness--almost an eagerness--to surrender personal freedoms in the name of security. And a false security, at that. For while Coruscant seemed far from the war, it was also at the center of it.

p.51 Before the war, widespread corruption had stifled the legislative process. Bills languished, measures sat for years without being addressed, votes were protested and subjected to endless recounts...But one effect of the war had been to replace corruption and inertia with dereliction of duty. Reasoned discourse and debate had become so rare as to be archaic. In a political climate where representatives were afraid to speak their minds, it was easier--and thought to be safer--to cede power to those who least appeared to have some grasp of the truth.

96 "In their eagerness to perfect me, I’m afraid they’ll wipe my memory!" the droid said.
     "Would that be such a bad thing," Anakin said, "after what you claim to have been through?"
     "How can I be expected to learn from my mistakes if I can no longer remember them?"

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Dancing With An Alien
by Mary Logue

p.32 I had taken senior lifesaving and I knew the motto: "Reach, throw, row, go." There was nothing to reach this guy with, nothing to throw from the raft, no boat available to row out to him. So I was going. I hoped I could find him.

   I did the lifesaver's jump into the water. It's like a modified belly flop so your head doesn't go below water and you can keep your eyes on the spot the person went down.

p.77 There is never much doubt in Beatrice's life. She is very certain about what she believes in. She stopped going to church with her parents when she was nine. She told the pastor she didn't believe in a male god. She refused to say the pledge of allegiance in sixth grade, said it infringed on her civil rights.

p.97 I lay on my bed and listened to my heart beat. If you put your hand on your neck, it sounds like your heart is in your head. I decided my heart was in my head. I wasn't thinking anymore. I was simply feeling.

Doublas Adams's Starship Titanic
by Terry Jones

p.17 The moment he saw that figure he knew, deep in his bones, with that certainty that comes of being absolutely without any doubt whatsoever that something was about to go terribly, fearfully wrong.

p.51 *It may seem odd that a civilization that had never even heard of planet Earth and certainly had no idea of its existence should use French champagne for such an occasion. The explanation is rather complicated and involves a lot of stuff about time warps and black holes and an Intergalactic Smuggling Ring. If I were you I simply wouldn't worry about it and just get on with the story.

p.62 "All robotic functions on this ship are equipped with infraviolet translation sensors which automatically scans the brain impulses of passengers for language patterns. These patterns are then rearranged inside your head so that you can understand and speak intelligibly with the ship.. You are actually speaking and understanding Blerontinian. Pretty convenient for writers of science fiction, huh?"

p.73 "But we've got to be sensible," said Dan, adopting his "I'm in charge" manner that never fooled anyone.

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Return from Luna
by D. S. Halacy, Jr.

p.6 There was bitter irony in thanking a man for kicking the props out from under him!

p.13 He was a lean, crew-cut flier turned scientist who must have starred on the football field in college, Rob thought. You could spot an athlete from his stride and movements.

p.14 But wouldn't it be wonderful if all our efforts could be directed towards benefits and not destruction?

p.29 "Door coming open!" said the voice in the speaker, and slowly the entryway slid back, revealing the surface of the moon. Rob caught his breath at the sight--like silvery beach sand in the illumination of the moon low in the horizon, he thought, and then caught himself. Not the moon, the Earth! He gaped like an infant at a sight he was seeing for the first time in his eighteen years--Mother Earth riding in the lunar sky, a huge blue-green ball swathed in filmy white.

p.30-31 Jumping on the moon, Rob knew, was the mark of the newcomer. But he didn't let that stop him. With a mighty vertical push-off, he vaulted higher than Munson's head in a leap that brought a cry of pleased surprise from him. So what if you couldn't walk easily? You could leap as if you were wearing seven-league boots! He came down with jolt that surprised him until he remembered something Carpenter had told him. Although weight is slow, inertia is still with you on the moon. If you jump with all your might you land as hard as you would when jumping with all your might on Earth. So it wasn't as dreamy as he had expected, at least not the landing part of it. But that didn't stop him from leaping again like an intoxicated pogo stick. And when he looked back, there was Professor Munson right behind him!
     The two of them met the welcoming committee halfway between the base and the newly arrived craft. The man in the lead stuck out a hand in greeting and his smile was broad.
     "You must be Professor Munson," he said. "And don't feel apologetic, we're all frustrated ballet dancers at heart, I believe."

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Ember Series #3
The Prophet of Yonwood
by Jeanne DuPrau



p.26-27 The president ended with his usual sentence: “Let us pray to God for the safety of our people and the success of our endeavors.” Nickie always wondered about this. The idea seemed to be that if you prayed extremely hard--especially if a lot of people prayed at once--maybe God would change things. The trouble was, what if your enemy was praying to? Which prayer would God listen to?

p.28 This is how Nickie was: she wanted to know about everybody and everything--not just encyclopedia-type information, but ordinary things like what people did at their jobs and what their houses looked like inside and what they talked about. When she passed two or three people walking together on the street, she always hoped to catch an intriguing bit of conversation, like “I found her lying there dead!” Or “...and he left that very day without telling a soul and was never seen again!” But almost always, all she heard were the dull, connecting bits of the conversation, things like “And so I said to her...” and “Yeah, I think so too,” and “So it’s really kind of like...” And by the time they said whatever came next, they were out of earshot.


p.57-58 As soon as Amanda had gone off with Mrs. Beeson, Nickie found a pencil and a scrap of paper and wrote down these words: Sinners. Wrongness. Forces of evil. Shield of goodness. Those were the things to remember. It was so perfect--she could accomplish her Goal #3 by helping to battle the forces of evil and build the shield of goodness. Just the very words made her feel like a warrior. Maybe she should give something up, the way everyone else was. If she did, would she have more love to give to God? She thought probably her love for God was a little weak, since she didn’t know much about him and hadn’t really thought about whether she loved him or not. It was hard to love someone invisible that you’d never met.

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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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