Meaning in Life and Why It Matters by Susan Wolf

Reading it for damn Meaning of Life philosophy class. Basically argues that meaning is an entity separate from happiness and morality and is an essential element of a fully satisfying life. And her definition of meaning is "loving objects worthy of love and engaging with them in a positive way." Despite not wanting to read this at all, I find I don't hate it. I don't really outright reject anything she's said so far, although I will probably take issue with it being essential for the sake of the stupid paper I have to write on it. It seems like the easiest thing to exploit.

Here are strange, beautiful stories covering the full spectrum of the late Roger Zelazny's remarkable talents. In Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, Zelazny's rare ability to mix the dream-like, disturbing imagery of fantasy with the real-life hardware of science fiction is on full display. His vivid imagination and fine prose made him one of the most highly acclaimed writers in his field.

1. The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth: A tale of a fisherman on Venus who's trying to catch more than just a big fish.

2. The Keys to December: A tale of cat-people colonizing a new planet.

3. Devil Car: A story about sentient vehicles and how they interact with the world and their drivers.

4. A Rose for Ecclesiastes: A story of martian/human relations, romance and faith.

5. The Monster and the Maiden

6. Collector's Fever

7. This Mortal Mountain: A man sets out to climb the largest mountain in the known universe, and runs into some unusual complications along the way.

8. This Moment of the Storm

9. The Great Slow Kings: A story about a pair of kings that are really, really slow when it comes to making decisions for their kingdom.

10. A Museum Piece

11. Divine Madness

12. Corrida

13. Love is an Imaginary Number

14. The Man Who Loved the Faioli: A moving romance between a vampire and a cyborg.

15. Lucifer: A tale about a man trying to regain that which was lost.

16. The Furies

17. The Graveyard Heart: A story about a group of people who have formed a sort of upper-class society that remains virtually immortal by freezing themselves between big parties, and only being awake for small amounts of time.

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

Therefore, there was mystery about him.

It was in the season of the rains . . .

It was well into the time of the great wetness. . .

It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night

The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.

Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique, but the machine had been built and was operated by Yama-Dharma, fallen, of the Celestial City; and, it was told, he had ages ago built the mighty thunder chariot of Lord Shiva: that engine that fled across the heavens belching gouts of fire in its wake.

Despite his tall from favor, Yama was still deemed mightiest of the artificers, though it was not doubted that the Gods of the City would have him to die the real death were they to learn of the pray-machine. For that matter, though, it was not doubted that they would have him to die the real death without the excuse of the pray-machine, also, were he to come into their custody. How he would settle this matter with the Lords of Karma was his own affair, though none doubted that when the time came he would find a way. He was half as old as the Celestial City itself, and not more than ten of the gods remembered the founding of that abode. He was known to be wiser even than the Lord Kubera in the ways of the Universal Fire. But these were his lesser Attributes. He was best known for another thing, though few men spoke of it. Tall, but not overly so; big, but not heavy; his movements, slow and fluent. He wore red and spoke little.

He tended the pray-machine, and the giant metal lotus he had set atop the monastery roof turned and turned in its sockets.

A light rain was falling upon the building, the lotus and the jungle at the foot of the mountains. For six days he had offered many kilowatts of prayer, but the static kept him from being heard On High. Under his breath, he called upon the more notable of the current fertility deities, invoking them in terms of their most prominent Attributes.

A rumble of thunder answered his petition, and the small ape who assisted him chuckled. "Your prayers and your curses come to the same. Lord Yama," commented the ape. "That is to say, nothing."

"It has taken you seventeen incarnations to arrive at this truth?" said Yama. "I can see then why you are still doing time as an ape."

HikiCulture posts.

Currently Brom's "The Child Thief" and Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell"
I'm in the mood for dark fantasy.

I swear if I stare at your sig and avi long enough the orange in the faces grow brighter. Am i imagining this?