Bill Bryson's Big Bang: "Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realise.To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialised and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once.For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, co-operative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under-appreciated state known as existence.Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don’t actually care about you — indeed, don’t even know that you are there. They don’t even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive."Koliko me je samo puta ovaj Brajsonov uvod u Kratku istoriju bezmalo svačega razdrmao. Kaže B. Brajson dalje:
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"Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely — make that miraculously — fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. "
Duhovito štivo primerenog naslova. Brajson me je vratio na školske početke, još jednom ispredavao "prirodu i društvo". Čitala sam ga uz glasan smeh na početku, malo kasnije me nervirao njegov smisao za humor, ali knjigu nisam ostavljala i na kraju priznala da ništa slično nisam čitala. Od tada malo više gledam nebo i zvezde (uglavnom petkom uveče). Kod nas izdala Laguna, preveo odlični Goran Skrobonja.
