Shepherd Moon, 2nd Edition

Part Four

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Salad Forks and Other Things

- with a nod to the masters of space opera: J. Michael Straczynski, Larry Niven, David Brin, E.E. (Doc) Smith, Iain M. Banks, and, of course, George Lucas.

My thanks. And my apologies.

“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.

If you have that awareness, you have good manners,

no matter which fork you use.”

- Emily Post, author and founder of the Emily Post Institute,

late 20th Century Earth

“Good manners can replace morals. It may be years before anyone knows if what you are doing is right. But if what you are doing is nice, it will be immediately evident.”

- P.J. O’Rourke, journalist and writer, early 21st Century Earth

“Learn young about hard work and manners –

and you’ll be through the whole dirty mess

and nicely dead again before you know it.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist and poet, 20th Century Earth

“Aliens, humans - labels hardly matter: at the heart of things, what one needs to know is that, beneath the exterior, we are all people, and we should treat each other as people, according to one’s traditions and culture. That’s what good manners are. If you have that, it’s easy to make friends, whether they be Human or Elyran, Dixx or Detterex, Arachnian or Erocii. All it takes is a laugh and a smile. The problem, of course, is to understand what a smile looks like for an Arachnian or a Dixx.”

- Dr. Alexandra Romarkin, Secretary-General of the New United Nations, 2310 Earth