"Back when the world was young they was our brothers. They ain't much to look at now, too cold by 'alf and no fun at a feast. But they're fast, and they ain't forgotten how to kill."
—Anonymous Ogre on the Yhetees, Warhammer: Ogre Kingdoms, 6th edition
"Intelligence...is not a winning survival trait. Consider the scavenger feeding on your vomit. Two million years ago, its ancestors made the galaxy tremble."
That they had talked to him didn't mean a thing. Half the so-called animals of Mars could talk the desert lingo—a vocabulary of a few hundred words, part of them Earthian, part of them Martian, part of them God-knew-what.
For here on Mars many of the animals were not animals at all, but simply degenerating forms of life that at one time must have formed a complex civilization. The Venerables, who still retained some of the shape of bipeds, would have reached the highest culture, but there must have been many varying degrees of culture, living by compromise or by tolerance.
For here on Mars many of the animals were not animals at all, but simply degenerating forms of life that at one time must have formed a complex civilization. The Venerables, who still retained some of the shape of bipeds, would have reached the highest culture, but there must have been many varying degrees of culture, living by compromise or by tolerance.
— Mirage, by Clifford Simak
