All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night.
Ah, the warm fuzzies of decisive action.
Accelerating to speeds faster than light was, of course, impossible. General relativity had made that clear enough back in the twentieth century. However, since then a number of ways of circumventing...
Americans think we Brits drink tea because we’re polite and genteel or something, whereas we really drink it because it’s a stimulant and it’s hot enough to sterilize cholera bacteria.)
You’ve got to learn to think like a state if you work in the Civil Service. Organizations are not human beings and they don’t obey the same priorities. They’re hives.
When it isn’t spending half its energy scanning for viruses or painting a pretty drop-shadow under the mouse pointer it runs like greased whippet shit.
The strongest manacles are born in the blood.
The destiny of intelligent tool-using life was to be a stepping-stone in the evolution of corporate instruments.
The defense establishment of the United States of America is so complicated, not to say baroque, that many different agencies can accomplish any given task. Want to invade a small Caribbean island? Wh...
Ever since that time of unbound paranoia the one unbreakable law of the British secret services has been: Thou shalt not snoop on Number Ten. Because we are not in the business of generating policy—it...
Demonstrating the importance of being Ernst as the marketing department put it.
You win some, you lose some. And when you lose, you have to pull yourself together and go back for more. Otherwise, the other side wins by default.
You have imposter syndrome, He says, but paradoxically, that’s often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignor...
Yippee. I haven’t had this much fun since I was in the Transhuman Police, mixing it up with superpowered neo-Nazis, and by fun I mean fuck me I demand a pay rise and a nice quiet office job—
When they first developed the organs of exploration, there was no there there. So they built timid, stupid machines and hurled them into the airless void to report back. Then they built idiot phone ex...
We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains.
This is serious business: you’re representing the Laundry in front of the Black Chamber and some very big defence contractors, old school tie and all that.I went to North Harrow Comprehensive, I sat w...
They were brilliant, widely read, incisive, and effortlessly effective analysts and programmers. Which is another reason why, ultimately, so many people died.
The vampire has just realized she’s in a meeting populated exclusively by spooks and people who go bump in the night.
She turns and stalks off in search of other minions to intimidate, leaving you flexing your fingers and trying to decide whether you want to strangle her or go down on your knees and beg for lessons.