I shake my head. The EQUESTRIAN
I can get you a cheaper ticket if you let me amputate your legs: I can even take your thighs as a deposit, said the travel agent.
His remit will be to monitor the use of reality-modification weapons by both sides in the conflict and to assure the civilized worlds that the New Republic does not engage in gratuitous use of time tr...
For instance, I never wrote to my MP to express my displeasure at the widespread deployment of sleeping policemen around the capital. It never occurred to me to do so: Mo and I don’t own a car, and sp...
Edinburgh has history the way cats have bad breath.
Where it’s not unusual for certain senior personnel to keep such a low profile that only the payroll computers in HR can remember their names.
We were created for a world where the rule of law did not extend to our kind, and our earliest templates were trained and triaged, so that only the obedient survived. Just imagining the act of disobey...
Viewed in the right light, a little sprinkle of free market pixie dust can turn the drabbest of public sector services (sewerage, for example) into a rainbow-hued profit unicorn.
Very good, Mr. Howard. They were the ones who didn’t try to second-guess their commanding officer. Can I suggest that in future you take a leaf from their book and refrain from poking your nose into t...
To put it bluntly, there are too many humans on this planet. Six-billion-plus primates. And we think too loudly. Our brains are neurocomputers, incredibly complex. The more observers there are, the mo...
Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life.
They’re vermin, Bob. They’ve been driven inland by over-fishing and now they’re spreading disease, attacking waste collections, keeping people awake in the small hours, and carrying away stray cats an...
They’re nuts. Completely insane! I don’t get this gambling thing. Didn’t these people study statistics at university?
There’s a fire on the hillside just above Skyland and it’s like to go wild if we
Oh yes, and compulsory ferret-legging down the pub on Tuesday evenings, for the tourist trade tha’ knows. Ferret-legging? Rachel looked at him incredulously. Yup. You tie your kilt up around your knee...
My computer terminal whistles at me: YOU HAVE MAIL. No shit, Sherlock, I always have mail. It's an existential thing: if I don't have mail it would mean that something is very wrong with the world
Jest upalny letni wtorek. Stoi na placu przed dworcem Centraal, ma włączone gałki oczne. Kanał skrzy się słońcem, wokół śmigają skutery i rowerzyści-kamikadze, ze wszystkich stron trajkocą turyści. Pl...
I’m possessed, recursively.
It’s not as if he’s had much of a chance until now, but somehow he has internalized the ur-cultural narrative: you grow up, go to university, get a job, meet Ms. Right, get married, settle down, have...
It was one of ours originally, but no human being can sprint around a building with their helmet off and backpack missing in a fimbulwinter cold enough to freeze liquid oxygen.