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The quote behind Circular Paradox

Debra asked me what the quote was, as she enjoys Orson Scott Card’s work, too. So, I decided to copy it here. The first book of his that I read was “Enchantment“, which Sue Reno mentioned on the QuiltArt list a couple of years ago. I LOVED it….it’s about the origins of the Sleeping Beauty legend, and involves time travel from current day (or thereabouts) to 9th century Kievan Rus / Ukraine…..

I just finished reading the Ender’s series of books: Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide. OK…scratch that…I thought I had read the series, but in looking up the hotlinks on Amazon I now find (yippeee!) there are at least four more… Anyway, the quotation was near the end of the second book, on p. 370:

Olhado, who is essentially Ender’s step-son, was blinded as a child and has metal “all-seeing” eyes that can record and download events…sort of like an eyeball video-camera. He and Ender (actual name is Andrew Wiggin, nickname of Ender came from his older sister when he was an wee thing, but she couldn’t pronounce Andrew) are talking about the crisis at hand. They live on a planet called Lusitania, which is more or less a Portuguese Catholic outpost of the Hundred Worlds inhabited by three sentient species: humans, buggers and pequeninos. Andrew–the titular Speaker for the Dead–came to the planet to “speak” the death of Olhado’s father, Marcao. However, several millenia earlier, Ender had saved Earth from certain destruction by the buggers (that’s what Ender’s Game is about) –details omitted in case you want to read the stories. If I go into more detail I’d have to re-write the books, so if you’re curious go check it out…it’s way cool!

Olhado begins:

“It’s funny. Before you got here, the Bishop tried to tell us all that you were Satan. Quim’s the only one in the family that took him seriously. But if the Bishop had told us you were Ender, we would have stoned you to death in the praca (plaza/town square) the day you arrived.”

“Why don’t you now?” (replied Ender / Andrew Wiggin)

“We know you now. That makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Even Quim doesn’t hate you now. When you really know somebody, you can’t hate them.”

“Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”

“Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes.”

End quote.

So there you go. Which came first — the chicken, or the egg? And if the universe is finite, what’s on the other side? How can there be infinity, if the known world is finite? Isn’t there always something on the other side?

And my brain is now sufficiently addled, that I’m bidding you all good night!

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