The Stars Are Cold Toys — Star Shadow are two 1997 books of a space opera duology by Russian science fiction writer Sergey Lukianenko. It's a first-person narration, told by a pilot Pyotr Khrumov, who attempts to prevent destruction of the planet.
While the story begins as hard science fiction describing Pyotr's flight to home on shuttle Spiral, later the emphasis drifts from technical details. The duology is known for bright worlds of Geometers (a cynical deconstruction of the world of Upbringing and the famous Noon Universe of Strugatsky brothers) and Shadow (a world of utter individualism, in which every person is treated according with an often unpleasant reality of one's subconsciousness).
Read more about The Stars Are Cold Toys: Prehistory, Plot Summary, Societies, Ethical Issues, Trivia
Famous quotes containing the words stars, cold and/or toys:
“A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.”
—Alexander Smith (1830–1867)
“Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman pass by!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another—cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)