If you see a lot of ?s where dashes and apostrophes ought to be, go to the View menu and set Encoding to one of the Western European character sets.

"Representative" democracy
      "On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
      "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
      "I did," said Ford. "It is."
      "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
      "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
      "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
      "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
      "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
      "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
      ...
      "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
      "But that's terrible," said Arthur.
      "Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairan dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin."

Terrorism (and the problem of collective action)
      "And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."
      ...
      "But unless we determine to take action," said the old man querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in his nature, "then we shall all be destroyed, we shall all die. Surely we care about that?"
      "Not enough to want to get killed over it," said Ford.

Power corrupts
      The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
      To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

Economics and religion
      This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
      ...
      And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Existentialism
      There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
      There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The environment
      So it can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travelers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist. The state it's in now is only the result of what we've done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it's a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we've lost. The people who do understand what we've lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left.

Fallibility
      "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

Human flight
      The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying.
      There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying.
      The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

      Carefully picking up the hang glider, he carried it out to the edge of the rock . . . With a light heart he threw himself out forward, and sailed into empty space. . . . He was out there. He was flying. He was just some kind of a bird. . . . He was beginning to get a sense, though, that just dropping himself in his own swimming pool might be a little tougher than he had expected. But that was how he liked things to be—a little tougher than expected.

Special relativity
      Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light.

General relativity
      But he went forward, because he must go forward. After a long time he realized that to go forward here was to go in a circle and come round on one's own tracks again . . . He began to run. As he ran, the circles narrowed in and the ground began to slant. He was running in the darkening gloom, faster and faster, around the sinking inner lip of a pit, an enormous whirlpool going down to darkness: and as he knew this, his foot slipped and he fell.

Boundaries: pros and cons
      The bay opened its arms wide, slate blue beneath the spring haze, reaching on to the edge of the air. No lines were drawn, no boundaries. They sat gazing at that immense blue space. Arren's mind cleared, opening out to meet and celebrate the world.
      ...
      "It's as if they had no lines and distinctions and colors clear in their heads. Everything's the same to them; everything's grey." (Oddly enough, Arren says this line.)

Economics
      "Wealth can’t stop," Granite said to Havzhiva. "It has to keep going. Like the blood circulating. You keep it, it gets stopped — that’s a heart attack. You die."

Environmental collapse
      The Werelian capitalists who colonised the planet had exploited it and their slaves recklessly, mindlessly, in a long orgy of profit-making. It takes a while to spoil a world, but it can be done. Strip-mining and single-crop agriculture had defaced and sterilised the earth. The rivers were polluted, dead. Huge dust storms darkened the eastern horizon.

Corporations
      There is no information about corporations. There is only disinformation. Even after they collapse, imploding into a cratered ruin stinking of burnt stockholder and surrounded by an impenetrable barrier formed by members of Congress and other government officials holding hands and wearing yellow tape marked Private Property, No Trespassing, Keep Out, No Hunting, Fishing, or Accounting—even then there is no truth in them.

      Condensed Doubles, by Roger Wells: Combining the concepts of the Ace Doubles and Reader's Digest condensed books, The Portland Science Fiction Society is proud to present its new line of Condensed Doubles.

• Foundation and Empire Strike Back by Lucas and Asimov: The Mule almost destroys the Rebel Alliance and is finally defeated by Luke Skywalker, who discovers at the end that Hari Seldon is his real father.
   
• The Fellowship of the Ringworld Engineers by Tolkien and Niven: When it is realized that the Hobbits possess the source of power that Sauron is seeking, Louis Wu is chosen to lead a hearty band of adventurers to destroy it upon the very mountain formed from a collision with a meteor.
   
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas with Oysters by Verne and Davidson: Daring adventurers travel beneath the waves to discover the source of their paperclips that evolve into coathangers, which turns out to be the first wave of an alien invasion.
   
• Twilight of the Gods Themselves by Nietzsche and Asimov: Humanity inevitably makes way for the emerging superman, to confront the aliens of another dimension who are sending impossible isotopes into our world.
   
• The Fountains of Paradise Lost by Milton and Clarke: Rebel Angels, after being cast down to earth, build an elevator to heaven in which to return.
   
• By the Waters of Babylon 5 by Benét and Straczynski: The young apprentice priest explores far into the forbidden lands to discover that those they worship as deities were in reality people of many worlds who gathered together in a remote outpost of space.

Excerpt from "Desire" by Abigail Sibelman (magnets on steel oven).
      Ocean steam cuts words in a sail:
"Yesterday is nevermore, prisoner to a time of fools and gods."

Scary quote
      According to TomPaine.com, a Bush adviser told reporter Ron Suskind last fall (2004, I think) that "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality...we'll act again, creating other new realities..."