First and Last Lines

Large photo: Kartikay Sahay, small photo: Robert Couse-Baker

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Ghalen

Jamilah Fenstra and Robert Horton met at a farmer’s market street-fair in Santa Monica on a cloudless Tuesday afternoon.

“Let’s go home, son.”

— Walter Mosley

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The Troubled Man

The story begins with a sudden fit of rage.

His and Linda’s, his and Klara’s; nobody else’s.

— Henning Mankell

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When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...

When the little boy said the emperor was naked, he wasn’t telling anyone anything that didn’t already know.

It’s what’s most special about our kind: we not only have thoughts, but have thoughts about our thoughts, and thoughts about our thoughts about our thoughts.

— Steven Pinker

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We are Green and Trembling

My beloved aunt, I am as innocent and forged in the image and likeness of God as any other, as every other, though I have been a cabin boy, shopkeeper, and soldier, and before then, long before, a small girl at your skirts.

She laughs.

— Gabriel Cabezón Cámara

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If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

So our true last prayer is this: Rise to the occasion, humanity, and win.

— Elizer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares

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Communicating Sequential Processes

Forget for a while about computers and computer programming, and think instead about objects in the world around us, which act and interact with us and with each other in accordance with some characteristic pattern of behaviour.

The two approaches share their most important characteristic, namely a sound mathematical basis for reasoning about specifications, designs and implementations; and either of them can be used for both theoretical investigations and for practical applications.

— C.A.R. Hoare

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Before the Frost

His thoughts were like a shower of red-hot glowing needles, causing an almost unbearable pain.

Winter had arrived in Skåne.

— Henning Mankell

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Every Screen on the Planet

The note arrived sometime around midnight, with no letterhead and no address line.

But since then, both Trump and Xi have defined the app’s future.

— Emily Baker-White

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Flashout

The subway car gobbled the track, lurching, shrieking.

White and red.

— Alexis Soloski

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Firewall

The wind died down toward evening, then stopped completely.

But no one ever managed to answer the most important question: What was it that had set the process in motion?

— Henning Mankell

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A Method of Programming

‘Informatics’ is the name used since 1968 in non-Anglo-Saxon countries for the subject called ‘computer science’ in the USA and Great Britain.

In this respect the series of exercises below, whether deliberately or not, forms an unusual exercise in mathematical style.

— Edsger Dijkstra and W.H.J. Feijen

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Buckley

William F. Buckley, Jr., the intellectual leader of the modern conservative movement, rightly saw himself less as founder than heir.

A founder of our world, he speaks to us from a different one, beyond our reach but hovering near, if only we can discover in ourselves the imagination and generosity, the kindness and warmth, that Bill Buckley demonstrated time and again in his long and singular life.

— Sam Tanenhaus

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IBM System/360 Principles of Operation

The IBM System/360 is a solid-state, program compatible, data processing system providing the speed, precision, and data manipulating versatility demanded by the challenge of commerce, science, and industry.

This section of the system control panel contains controls intended only for customer-engineering use.

— IBM

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Shadow Ticket

When trouble comes to town, it usually takes the North Shore Line.

Best pal always, Skeet

— Thomas Pynchon

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One Step Behind

The rain stopped shortly after 5 p.m.

For the first time in a long while, he could relax.

— Henning Mankell

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Battle of the Big Bang

What is the oldest thing you can remember?

The power to remember our past lies in your future.

— Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper

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What We Can Know

On 20 May 2119 I took the overnight ferry from Port Marlborough and arrived in the late afternoon at the small quay near Maentwrog-under-Sea that serves the Bodleian Snowdonia Library.

The Confessions of Vivien Blundy, edited and with notes by Professor Thomas Metcalfe, with an introduction by Rose Church, Gibbon Professor of History, both of the University of the South Downs, and with a preface by Dr Donald Drummond, Senior Archivist at the Bodleian Library, was published in 2125 by the University of the South Downs Press.

— Ian McEwan