Name: Terraformers
ISBN: 9781250228017

Annalee Newitz

Terraformers

Katheryn

We are living beings, and that is why we want to survive.

We are not humans and animals. We are allies in the Great Bargain.

Inside every conflict, a friendship waits to be born. 

Water management is where the land meets politics.

In the Great Bargain, we must accept that some people will not be pleased to meet us.

A successful community requires thoughtful participation, hard work, and a healthy appreciation for the absurd. 

You cannot measure a person's intentions, but you can measure their contributions. 

D9nt build a person if you do not intend to be their ally. 

Always be prepared for a disaster, so that you can prevent it.

Rivers might turn out to be people. Don't make any assumptions. 

Private property is the smallest unit of warfare. 

H. sapiens always figures out a new way to implement caste systems. 

Land use treaties fail for two reasons: they are made in secret, or they are made without full consent of all parties

We do not make sacrifices, but we do make bargains. Pay attention to the difference. One path leads to simple death, and the other to a complicated life. 

We talked to a lot of workers whose ratings put them in the Blessed category-their limiters prevent them from talking about anything but their jobs.

"Those templates are garbage. They assume this hierarchy of intelligence measured in language, but that's not how it works. Listen, there are two kinds of brains, right? Unmodified intelligence and human-equivalenr intelligence. Once you have a human-equivalent brain, that's it. There are no natural levels of intelligence. But there are ways of artificially limiting people's vocabulary to create the illusion of mental hierarchy. A person with a Blessed rating can only talk about the one task they were designed for-like, say, tree planting. A Mount can only speak in single-syllable words. Of course, a so-called person has full vocabulary access. So how do you create the InAss (Intelligence Assessment) ratings? At Verdance, the template calls for limiters. Basically they break part of the software that controls the brain-sender interface." -Sulfur

"It should be a rights violation, but hominins love it." -Rocket

"I liked how to make it clear that revolutions don't happen overnight. Just because there's a huge battle doesn't mean the revolution is over." 

Never has an author so smoothly summed up a 335 page book before. The book takes place over centuries, and takes on the concept of "the arch of history bends towards justice"; showing that the bend toward justice is not only a lengthy process, but also incredibly difficult work built on small victories over time. There are few books that use read that I would recommend to everyone I meet (walkaway and Atlas Shrugged being two of them) and this book is one of them. I'm going to read it again and again and again until it's seared into my brain. 

"I liked how to make it clear that revolutions don't happen overnight. Just because there's a huge battle doesn't mean the revolution is over." 

Never has an author so smoothly summed up a 335 page book before. The book takes place over centuries, and takes on the concept of "the arch of history bends towards justice"; showing that the bend toward justice is not only a lengthy process, but also incredibly difficult work built on small victories over time. There are few books that use read that I would recommend to everyone I meet (walkaway and Atlas Shrugged being two of them) and this book is one of them. I'm going to read it again and again and again until it's seared into my brain. 