Sociopath was one of the most useful concepts that Miriam's Memetic Engineering Task Force had imported from the United States: Erasmus's Propaganda Ministry had been working overtime to raise awarene...
Russian espionage directed against the West has been rising since 2001. We kind of forgot that you don’t need communism to set up an east/west squabble between the Russian Empire and Western Europe—in...
Organizations are not human beings and they don’t obey the same priorities. They’re hives. Like the bank you worked for, I suppose, but you were too specialized, working at too low a level to see the...
Olga noticed Mirium looking at her blankly. 'Don't you pray?' she asked.'Pray?' Mirium shook her head. 'I don't understand - ''Prayers! Oh, yes, I forgot. Didn't dear Roland say that on the other side...
Never bring a knife to a gun fight, I tell Mr. Crispy as I turn away from him. His right arm thinks about it for a moment, then falls off.
Maybe solitude is the key to it all. A galactic isolation imposed by the vast gulfs between the stars, the lightspeed limit. As a species develops you might have a brief phase of individuality, of inn...
Los idiotas emiten bogones que hacen que las máquinas se estropeen en su presencia. Los administradores de sistema absorben los bogones, lo que permite que las máquinas vuelvan a funcionar.
It’s not just the music. When we develop a working AI or upload minds, we’ll need a way of defending it against legal threats. That’s what Gianni pointed out to me . . .
I feel ill with emotional indigestion: I don’t think I’ve ever felt for Mo the kind of raw, priapic lust I feel for Ramona, but Ramona is a poisonous bloom—off-limits if I value my life.
I don’t have a license to kill, but I don’t have orders not to kill in the course of my duties, either. Which realization I find extremely disturbing;
Hopefully we don’t end up as someone else’s dinner. For a moment I feel a stab of remorse for the lamb: born into an infinite, hostile universe and destined from birth to be nothing more than fodder f...
He shakes his head. I’m sorry, but the official Home Office superhero team is going to have to conform to public expectations of what a superhero team should look like, or it’s not really going to wor...
He monologued at me. With PowerPoint.★★ ★★He what? And you’re still sane? Obviously I underestimated you.★★
Growing old is natural, growls the old woman. When you’ve lived long enough for all your ambitions to be in ruins, friendships broken, lovers forgotten or divorced acrimoniously, what’s left to go on...
Did it have a name, this project? Yes. The books and posters are called MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY, but she said I’d find it in the stacks under a very strange reference—KGB.2.YA—what’s so funny? Bob? Are...
Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extra-loud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they’re a big swinging dick, the prox...
Cocktail hour at the embassy consisted of lots of charming men and women in suits and LBDs drinking Buck’s Fizz and being friendly to one another, and so what if half of them had gill slits and dorsal...
But what are we going to do with a load of guns? asks Pete. I don’t know, Brains, what are we going to do with a half-track full of guns? Pinky asks. Brains chuckles. Same thing we do every night, Pin...
But I can’t be in three places at once! Tough, says Mo, and that shell-like expression cracks into a grin. You’re management now; isn’t it time you learned to delegate?
Bureaucracies excel at performing tasks that must be done consistently whether the people assigned to them are brilliant performers or bumbling fools. You can’t always count on having Albert Einstein...