cfkane
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2006
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This thread is for the creation and discussion of the flavor changes, including Great People names, pedia entries and the like.
Fictionalization IV is meant to have its own internal continuity. While it is based on a variety of sources, a single timeline does exist (contradictions, such as various sources stating the world ended decades ago, can be chalked up to alternate realities and such). As such, all Great People and tech quotes are attributed to fictional characters.
So, I'd like all pedia entries to fit nicely, if loosely, within each other. Here's the adapted entry for England as an example:
The origins of modern Britain lie in what is now Turkey. The islands were originally named after Brutus, one of the Trojan refugees that sailed with Aeneas in the years following the Trojan War. It was Brutus who first brought a human presence to the islands, after first wiping out the native race of giants there. There, the first British society was founded.
In the classical age Britain lay on the periphery of the civilized world; Julius Caesar's visitations to the island in 55/54 BC were viewed as a daring voyage into the unknown. But in 43 AD the island was invaded by Roman soldiers under the Emperor Claudius, and it was to spend the next four centuries as a Roman province. The Romans built cities, roads, and great bathhouses, the ruins of which can still be seen today. With the collapse of Roman power under Germanic onslaught, tribal migrations into Britain began about the middle of the 5th century. The first arrivals were invited by a British chieftain to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. These first mercenaries were from three tribes - the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes - which were located on the coastlands of northwestern Germany. Eventually, these peoples would themselves topple the existing order, and Britain would spend many centuries divided between various warring kingdoms such as Mercia, East Anglia, and others. Even the celebrated King Arthur could not unite the island, although he did manage to inspire countless fiefdoms that would later become modern England. The first political entity that could rightly be called "England" formed out of the efforts of the kingdom of Wessex to unite the island against the invasion of Danes and Vikings in the 9th century. But the English domination was fleeting; the subsequent Norman Conquest (1066) resulted in the subordination of England to a Frankish aristocracy, and the introduction of feudalism to the Isles.
The Norman invasion reoriented England from the Scandinavian world to the Mediterranean one, and reintroduced many elements of Latin culture that had been lost in the Germanic invasions. The English Normans would eventually give rise to a purely British line of kings, the Plantagenets. Three centuries later, the Wars of the Roses was the final struggle between the Yorkist and Lancastrian descendants of the Plantagenets for control of the throne. When Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, seized the crown in 1485, leaving the hunchbacked Yorkist Richard III dead upon the field of battle, few Englishmen would have predicted that 118 years of Tudor rule had begun. The freewheeling Tudors also gave rise to England's only non-human monarch. Gloriana I (1558-1603) proved to be an inspiring figure and able ruler. No observer in 1558, any more than in 1485, would have predicted that despite the social discord, political floundering, and international humiliation of the past decades, the kingdom again stood on the threshold of an extraordinary age. Her reign ushered in two centuries of British exploration, colonization, and artistic and intellectual advances, as well as a renewed influx of magical arts, lost since the days of Arthur. When Gloriana, the "Faerie Queene," died childless, Parliament offered the crown to the closest blood kin, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England (1603-1625) and founded the Stuart dynasty. The Stuarts kings did not possess the best luck; Charles I was defeated by the forces of Parliament in the English Civil War and executed, and a scant four decades later his descendent James II was also overthrown in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. But despite all this turbulence, by 1700 England had merged with Scotland to become "Britain" and established an identity that would be both Protestant and Parliamentry.
The British Empire was to be one based on trade and control of the seas. Using the soldiers commonly denoted "Redcoats", every major war Britain engaged in during the 18th and 19th centuries increased its colonial power. The Seven Years' War was particularly notable in this respect, and so were the Napoleonic Wars. By 1820 the total population of the British Empire was 200 million, 26%% of the world's total population. However acquired, all these acquisitions added to the crown's and the country's power and reputation. For the privileged and the rich, the Victorian era was pre-eminently one of confidence and arrogance, under the able guidance of Britain's two longtime Prime Ministers, Gladstone and Disraeli. Stretching from Australia and New Zealand through India, much of Africa, and Canada, and even parts of the Moon, the British Empire under Queen Victoria was truly one on which the "sun never set."
But the "long summer of peace" was battered first by a Martian invasion of London, then by the devastating War in the Air, and finally in the bloodbath of Flanders. Although Britain suffered far less physical damage than France and underwent no political revolution, World War I may have affected it more fundamentally than any other European power. The war was a catalyst for social and economic change. The mainstays of the early Industrial Revolution, such as coal mining, textile production, and shipbuilding, upon which British prosperity had been built, were now impoverished or redundant. Britain was slow to develop many of the newer manufacturing industries, such as those involving chemicals, electronics, and automobiles. British foreign policy for much of the postwar period aimed at rehabilitating Germany, while domestic policy focused on institutionalizing socialism to counter public concerns. In general, these movements were opposed by France and resulted in a rupture between Britain and its wartime ally, forcing France into a position of isolation that would have prodigious consequences for Europe with the rise of Hynkel in the 1930s. World War II was a British victory, but left the nation bankrupt. Postwar Britain, in its panic, elected the ruthless and feared Sir Harold Wharton to the position of Prime Minister. Wharton, known by his epithet "Big Brother", made sweeping socialist reforms taking the population into one of modern history's most repressive societies. After Wharton's death in 1952, the "Airstrip One" period came to a quick end. Weakened by war and repression, Britain was unable to prevent the onset of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. Although Britons maintained a high standard of living, the British economy continued to perform poorly throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As a reaction, Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) set out to end socialism in Britain. Her most dramatic acts consisted of a continuing series of statutes to denationalize nearly every industry that IngSoc had brought into public ownership during the previous 40 years. Her successor, Jim Hacker, largely helped to seal these reforms. Promising that "we shall govern as New IngSoc," the Blair government installed in general elections in 1997 accepted some of Thatcher's foreign policies but also carried out the economic reforms it promised in its manifesto, before disaster hit again.
The Third World War hit Britain hard, and it succumbed once again to a radical party, Norsefire. Like IngSoc before it, culture was carefully dictated, albeit not as bluntly as the Big Brother days. Nationalism and xenophobia nearly wiped out all minorities on the island, until a rogue terrorist succeeded in destroying the government and plunging the state into anarchy. But in this chaotic void, the first signs of a new hope for humanity came, for in the many years that the world was wracked by infertility, it was in Britain that the first new child was born.
And here's a list of the altered tech quotes
Fictionalization IV is meant to have its own internal continuity. While it is based on a variety of sources, a single timeline does exist (contradictions, such as various sources stating the world ended decades ago, can be chalked up to alternate realities and such). As such, all Great People and tech quotes are attributed to fictional characters.
So, I'd like all pedia entries to fit nicely, if loosely, within each other. Here's the adapted entry for England as an example:
Spoiler :
The origins of modern Britain lie in what is now Turkey. The islands were originally named after Brutus, one of the Trojan refugees that sailed with Aeneas in the years following the Trojan War. It was Brutus who first brought a human presence to the islands, after first wiping out the native race of giants there. There, the first British society was founded.
In the classical age Britain lay on the periphery of the civilized world; Julius Caesar's visitations to the island in 55/54 BC were viewed as a daring voyage into the unknown. But in 43 AD the island was invaded by Roman soldiers under the Emperor Claudius, and it was to spend the next four centuries as a Roman province. The Romans built cities, roads, and great bathhouses, the ruins of which can still be seen today. With the collapse of Roman power under Germanic onslaught, tribal migrations into Britain began about the middle of the 5th century. The first arrivals were invited by a British chieftain to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. These first mercenaries were from three tribes - the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes - which were located on the coastlands of northwestern Germany. Eventually, these peoples would themselves topple the existing order, and Britain would spend many centuries divided between various warring kingdoms such as Mercia, East Anglia, and others. Even the celebrated King Arthur could not unite the island, although he did manage to inspire countless fiefdoms that would later become modern England. The first political entity that could rightly be called "England" formed out of the efforts of the kingdom of Wessex to unite the island against the invasion of Danes and Vikings in the 9th century. But the English domination was fleeting; the subsequent Norman Conquest (1066) resulted in the subordination of England to a Frankish aristocracy, and the introduction of feudalism to the Isles.
The Norman invasion reoriented England from the Scandinavian world to the Mediterranean one, and reintroduced many elements of Latin culture that had been lost in the Germanic invasions. The English Normans would eventually give rise to a purely British line of kings, the Plantagenets. Three centuries later, the Wars of the Roses was the final struggle between the Yorkist and Lancastrian descendants of the Plantagenets for control of the throne. When Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, seized the crown in 1485, leaving the hunchbacked Yorkist Richard III dead upon the field of battle, few Englishmen would have predicted that 118 years of Tudor rule had begun. The freewheeling Tudors also gave rise to England's only non-human monarch. Gloriana I (1558-1603) proved to be an inspiring figure and able ruler. No observer in 1558, any more than in 1485, would have predicted that despite the social discord, political floundering, and international humiliation of the past decades, the kingdom again stood on the threshold of an extraordinary age. Her reign ushered in two centuries of British exploration, colonization, and artistic and intellectual advances, as well as a renewed influx of magical arts, lost since the days of Arthur. When Gloriana, the "Faerie Queene," died childless, Parliament offered the crown to the closest blood kin, James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England (1603-1625) and founded the Stuart dynasty. The Stuarts kings did not possess the best luck; Charles I was defeated by the forces of Parliament in the English Civil War and executed, and a scant four decades later his descendent James II was also overthrown in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. But despite all this turbulence, by 1700 England had merged with Scotland to become "Britain" and established an identity that would be both Protestant and Parliamentry.
The British Empire was to be one based on trade and control of the seas. Using the soldiers commonly denoted "Redcoats", every major war Britain engaged in during the 18th and 19th centuries increased its colonial power. The Seven Years' War was particularly notable in this respect, and so were the Napoleonic Wars. By 1820 the total population of the British Empire was 200 million, 26%% of the world's total population. However acquired, all these acquisitions added to the crown's and the country's power and reputation. For the privileged and the rich, the Victorian era was pre-eminently one of confidence and arrogance, under the able guidance of Britain's two longtime Prime Ministers, Gladstone and Disraeli. Stretching from Australia and New Zealand through India, much of Africa, and Canada, and even parts of the Moon, the British Empire under Queen Victoria was truly one on which the "sun never set."
But the "long summer of peace" was battered first by a Martian invasion of London, then by the devastating War in the Air, and finally in the bloodbath of Flanders. Although Britain suffered far less physical damage than France and underwent no political revolution, World War I may have affected it more fundamentally than any other European power. The war was a catalyst for social and economic change. The mainstays of the early Industrial Revolution, such as coal mining, textile production, and shipbuilding, upon which British prosperity had been built, were now impoverished or redundant. Britain was slow to develop many of the newer manufacturing industries, such as those involving chemicals, electronics, and automobiles. British foreign policy for much of the postwar period aimed at rehabilitating Germany, while domestic policy focused on institutionalizing socialism to counter public concerns. In general, these movements were opposed by France and resulted in a rupture between Britain and its wartime ally, forcing France into a position of isolation that would have prodigious consequences for Europe with the rise of Hynkel in the 1930s. World War II was a British victory, but left the nation bankrupt. Postwar Britain, in its panic, elected the ruthless and feared Sir Harold Wharton to the position of Prime Minister. Wharton, known by his epithet "Big Brother", made sweeping socialist reforms taking the population into one of modern history's most repressive societies. After Wharton's death in 1952, the "Airstrip One" period came to a quick end. Weakened by war and repression, Britain was unable to prevent the onset of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. Although Britons maintained a high standard of living, the British economy continued to perform poorly throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As a reaction, Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) set out to end socialism in Britain. Her most dramatic acts consisted of a continuing series of statutes to denationalize nearly every industry that IngSoc had brought into public ownership during the previous 40 years. Her successor, Jim Hacker, largely helped to seal these reforms. Promising that "we shall govern as New IngSoc," the Blair government installed in general elections in 1997 accepted some of Thatcher's foreign policies but also carried out the economic reforms it promised in its manifesto, before disaster hit again.
The Third World War hit Britain hard, and it succumbed once again to a radical party, Norsefire. Like IngSoc before it, culture was carefully dictated, albeit not as bluntly as the Big Brother days. Nationalism and xenophobia nearly wiped out all minorities on the island, until a rogue terrorist succeeded in destroying the government and plunging the state into anarchy. But in this chaotic void, the first signs of a new hope for humanity came, for in the many years that the world was wracked by infertility, it was in Britain that the first new child was born.
And here's a list of the altered tech quotes
Spoiler :
Mysticism:"Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore." - The Phantom Stranger
Polytheism:"Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth." - Apollo
Monarchy:"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." - Henry IV
Literature:"My library is dukedom large enough." - Prospero
Code of Laws:"For word of hate let word of hate be said, cries Justice. Stroke for bloody stroke must be paid. The one who acts must suffer. Three generations long this law resounds." - Strophe
Drama:"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. " - Jaques of Arden
Feudalism:"Chivalry!-why, maiden,... Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword. " - Ivanhoe
Theology:
"He who would valiant be,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather
Theres no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowd intent
To be a pilgrim. " - Christian the Pilgrim
Music:"If music be the food of love, play on." - Duke Orsino of Illyria
Divine Right:"It's good to be the king." - Louis XVI
Nationalism:"Remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are." - Rufus T. Firefly
Military Tradition:"I am the very model of a modern Major-General I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categoricalI'm very good at integral and differential calculus,I know the scientific names of beings animalculous. In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General!" - Mjr. General Henry Stanley
Constitution:"I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, two are called a lawfirm, and three or more become a congress!" - John Adams
Democracy:"Get up there with that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes. You'll see the whole parade of what Man's carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. That's what you'd see. There's no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties." - Jefferson Smith
Fascism:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH - IngSoc party slogans
Corporation:
"There is no America... There is only IBM, and ITT, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today." - Arthur Jensen
Mass Media:"I AM big! It's the PICTURES that got small!" - Norma Desmond
Ecology:"You think you own whatever land you land on, and the Earth is just a dead thing you can claim. But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name." - Pocahontas
The Wheel:"Let us ride with the clan down the street, by the courtesy of Frehdd's two feet. When you are with the sharpened rocks, have an \untranslatable\ time, an \untranslatable\ time, we will have a happy old time" - Inscription found near Mammoth Caves, ca. 12,000 BC
Agriculture:"Land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts. " - Gerald O'Hara
Sailing:"There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries, stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region." - Ishmael
Writing:"Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry." - William of Baskerville
Mathematics:"I count slowly, slowly, slowly getting faster, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, that's the Song of The Count!" - Graf von Kaunt, noted arithomaniac
Alphabet:"High thoughts must have high language." - Aeschylus
Currency:"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose the fact that they were the people who created the phrase, 'to make money'." - Francisco D'Aconia
Philosophy:"I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me." - Alvy Singer
Banking:"What is the robbing of a bank compared with the founding of a bank?" - Macheath "The Knife" Messer
Education:"You live and learn. Or you don't live long." - Lazarus Long
Economics:"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." - Gordon Gekko
Scientific Method:It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sherlock Holmes
Biology:"The history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories, painfully, perhaps even dangerously. I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way." - Ian Malcolm
Medicine:"I take risks, sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die. So, I guess my biggest problem is that I've been cursed with the ability to do the math." - Gregory House
Electricity:"Look! It's moving. It's-- it's... it's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive! It's alive, it's alive, it's alive! It's ALIVE!" - Henry Frankenstein
Fission:"Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the FEAR to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process which rules out human meddling, the Doomsday machine is terrifying and simple to understand... and completely credible and convincing." - Rolf Wehrner Strangelove
Flight:"You, you've got me? Who's got you?" - Lois Lane
Genetics:"It begins as a single individual born or hatched like every other member of their species. Except they're not. They carry inside them the genetic code that will take their species to the next evolutionary rung." - Mohinder Suresh
Fusion:"The power of the sun... in the palm of my hand!" - Otto Octavius
Mining:"Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, It's home from work we go!" - trad. Dwarven miner's song
Masonry:"It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls." - Epops the Hoopoe
Bronze Working:"It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair." - Priam of Troy
Construction:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" - inscription on the Tomb of Ozymandias
Horseback Riding:"I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. When I bestride him, I soar!" - Louis, Dauphin of France
Optics:"Now, bring me that horizon." - Jack Sparrow
Gunpowder:"My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains." - Phillip Marlowe
Rifling:"This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life." - U.S. Marine Corps chant
Steel:"Before that steam drill shall beat me down, I'll die with my hammer in my hand." - John Henry
Radio:"What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not to sing out of key." - Billy Shears
Computers:"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true. I'm half crazy over the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage, but you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two." - HAL 9000
Rocketry:"Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still. And I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much." - last transmission of Mjr. Thomas Bowie
Robotics:"A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws." - The Three Laws of Robotics
Future Tech:"The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves" - Personal motto of John Connor
Advanced Flight:"I feel the need. The need... for speed!" - Lt. Pete Mitchell
Stealth:"The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist." - Keyzer Soze
Military Science:"There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate." - Robert Jordan
Aesthetics:"The conviction is gradually forcing itself upon me that its not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul. " - Konstantin Treplyov
Shielding:"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - Henry Dorsett Case
Cloning:"All in all you're just another brick in the wall." - Pink
Aquaculture:"The sea is everything. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion. " - Captain Nemo
Bionics:"We can rebuild him. We have the technology." - Oscar Goldman, on Steve Austin
Cold Fusion:"On this site, a powerful engine will be built. An engine that will someday let us travel a hundred times faster than we can today. Imagine it. Thousands of inhabited planets at our fingertips. And we'll be able to explore those strange new worlds... and seek out new life and new civilizations. This engine will let us boldly go where no man has gone before. " - Zephram Cochrane
Cybernetics:"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." - Roy Batty
Polytheism:"Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth." - Apollo
Monarchy:"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." - Henry IV
Literature:"My library is dukedom large enough." - Prospero
Code of Laws:"For word of hate let word of hate be said, cries Justice. Stroke for bloody stroke must be paid. The one who acts must suffer. Three generations long this law resounds." - Strophe
Drama:"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. " - Jaques of Arden
Feudalism:"Chivalry!-why, maiden,... Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword. " - Ivanhoe
Theology:
"He who would valiant be,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather
Theres no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowd intent
To be a pilgrim. " - Christian the Pilgrim
Music:"If music be the food of love, play on." - Duke Orsino of Illyria
Divine Right:"It's good to be the king." - Louis XVI
Nationalism:"Remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are." - Rufus T. Firefly
Military Tradition:"I am the very model of a modern Major-General I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categoricalI'm very good at integral and differential calculus,I know the scientific names of beings animalculous. In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General!" - Mjr. General Henry Stanley
Constitution:"I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, two are called a lawfirm, and three or more become a congress!" - John Adams
Democracy:"Get up there with that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes. You'll see the whole parade of what Man's carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. That's what you'd see. There's no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties." - Jefferson Smith
Fascism:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH - IngSoc party slogans
Corporation:
"There is no America... There is only IBM, and ITT, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today." - Arthur Jensen
Mass Media:"I AM big! It's the PICTURES that got small!" - Norma Desmond
Ecology:"You think you own whatever land you land on, and the Earth is just a dead thing you can claim. But I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name." - Pocahontas
The Wheel:"Let us ride with the clan down the street, by the courtesy of Frehdd's two feet. When you are with the sharpened rocks, have an \untranslatable\ time, an \untranslatable\ time, we will have a happy old time" - Inscription found near Mammoth Caves, ca. 12,000 BC
Agriculture:"Land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts. " - Gerald O'Hara
Sailing:"There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries, stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region." - Ishmael
Writing:"Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry." - William of Baskerville
Mathematics:"I count slowly, slowly, slowly getting faster, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, that's the Song of The Count!" - Graf von Kaunt, noted arithomaniac
Alphabet:"High thoughts must have high language." - Aeschylus
Currency:"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose the fact that they were the people who created the phrase, 'to make money'." - Francisco D'Aconia
Philosophy:"I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me." - Alvy Singer
Banking:"What is the robbing of a bank compared with the founding of a bank?" - Macheath "The Knife" Messer
Education:"You live and learn. Or you don't live long." - Lazarus Long
Economics:"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." - Gordon Gekko
Scientific Method:It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sherlock Holmes
Biology:"The history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories, painfully, perhaps even dangerously. I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way." - Ian Malcolm
Medicine:"I take risks, sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die. So, I guess my biggest problem is that I've been cursed with the ability to do the math." - Gregory House
Electricity:"Look! It's moving. It's-- it's... it's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive! It's alive, it's alive, it's alive! It's ALIVE!" - Henry Frankenstein
Fission:"Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the FEAR to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process which rules out human meddling, the Doomsday machine is terrifying and simple to understand... and completely credible and convincing." - Rolf Wehrner Strangelove
Flight:"You, you've got me? Who's got you?" - Lois Lane
Genetics:"It begins as a single individual born or hatched like every other member of their species. Except they're not. They carry inside them the genetic code that will take their species to the next evolutionary rung." - Mohinder Suresh
Fusion:"The power of the sun... in the palm of my hand!" - Otto Octavius
Mining:"Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, It's home from work we go!" - trad. Dwarven miner's song
Masonry:"It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls." - Epops the Hoopoe
Bronze Working:"It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair." - Priam of Troy
Construction:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" - inscription on the Tomb of Ozymandias
Horseback Riding:"I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. When I bestride him, I soar!" - Louis, Dauphin of France
Optics:"Now, bring me that horizon." - Jack Sparrow
Gunpowder:"My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains." - Phillip Marlowe
Rifling:"This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life." - U.S. Marine Corps chant
Steel:"Before that steam drill shall beat me down, I'll die with my hammer in my hand." - John Henry
Radio:"What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not to sing out of key." - Billy Shears
Computers:"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true. I'm half crazy over the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage, but you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two." - HAL 9000
Rocketry:"Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still. And I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much." - last transmission of Mjr. Thomas Bowie
Robotics:"A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws." - The Three Laws of Robotics
Future Tech:"The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves" - Personal motto of John Connor
Advanced Flight:"I feel the need. The need... for speed!" - Lt. Pete Mitchell
Stealth:"The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist." - Keyzer Soze
Military Science:"There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate." - Robert Jordan
Aesthetics:"The conviction is gradually forcing itself upon me that its not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul. " - Konstantin Treplyov
Shielding:"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - Henry Dorsett Case
Cloning:"All in all you're just another brick in the wall." - Pink
Aquaculture:"The sea is everything. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion. " - Captain Nemo
Bionics:"We can rebuild him. We have the technology." - Oscar Goldman, on Steve Austin
Cold Fusion:"On this site, a powerful engine will be built. An engine that will someday let us travel a hundred times faster than we can today. Imagine it. Thousands of inhabited planets at our fingertips. And we'll be able to explore those strange new worlds... and seek out new life and new civilizations. This engine will let us boldly go where no man has gone before. " - Zephram Cochrane
Cybernetics:"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." - Roy Batty
