"Some dreams I have had in this cottage seem to give strength to the opinion that there is a psychic memory attached to certain neighbourhoods." (John M Synge, "The Aran Islands", 1907)
"Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time." (Howard P Lovecraft, "The White Ship", 1919)
*Other memories encroached, cold, fear-etched memories that reached forhim like taloned, withered claws. Memories of alien lands acrawl with loathesomeness and venom. Strange planets that were strange not because they were alien, but because of the abysmal terror in the very souls of them. Memories of shambling things that triumphed over pitiful peoples whose only crime was they could not fight back." (Clifford D Simak, "Shadow of Life", 1943)
"Memory is not a passive filing cabinet, but a continuous process beneath the level of consciousness; in a way, you are always reliving your entire past." (Poul Anderson, "Journeys End", 1957)
"However selective the conscious mind may be, most biological memories are unpleasant ones, echoes of danger and terror. Nothing endures for so long as fear." (James G Ballard, "The Drowned World", 1962)
"In the language of cybernetics, maintaining reactions can be outlined as follows: the sensing material receives information about the external environment in the form of coded signals. This information is reprocessed and sent in the form of new signals through defined channels, or networks. This new information brings about an internal reorganization of the system which contributes to the preservation of its integrity. The mechanism which reprocesses the information is called the control system. It consists of a vast number of input and output elements, connected by channels through which the signals are transmitted. The information can be stored in a recall or memory system, which may consist of separate elements, each of which can be in one of several stable states. The particular state of the element varies, under the influence of the input signals. When a number of such elements are in certain specified states, information is, in effect, recorded in the form of a text of finite length, using an alphabet with a finite number of characters. These processes underlie contemporary electronic computing machines and are, in a number of respects, strongly analogous to biological memory systems." (Carl Sagan, "Intelligent Life in the Universe", 1966)
"History has limited use, she knew, since memory distorts." (Suzy M Charnas, "The Unicorn Tapestry’", 1980)
"Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short." (Frank Herbert, "Heretics of Dune", 1983)
"Some things you teach yourself to remember to forget." (William Gibson, "Count Zero", 1986)
"Do not look for revelations in the ancient ruins. You will find here only what you bring: bits of memory, wisps of the past as thin as clouds in the summer, fragments of stone that are carved with symbols that sometimes almost make sense." (Pat Murphy," The Falling Woman"1986)
"We live forever, we transform ourselves, we transform worlds, solar systems, we ship across interstellar space, we defy time and deny death, but the one thing we cannot recreate is memory, he thought." (Ian MacDonald, "The Days of Solomon Gursky", 1998)
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