Connecting to the outernet was less of a shock this time, as the monitor gave him a sense of distance from it, but it was still annoying. How did these people live with such a system, stalked by adver...
We share need, not-human. Yours is straightforward. … Mine is less so, but you will serve it. Come.
The Tyr had tried. It had really tried. It must have gone over every element of human psychology, tried desperately to understand the nature of human aesthetic sense … and then failed, miserably, in e...
Only in summer-phase is it carnivorous. If there was an award for understatement, I thought, the Tyr would trounce all competition.
My identity is without root.
Civilized man longs for the illusion of barbarism. Either his culture fulfills this need by adopting its outer trappings, or he will be seduced by his first contact with a culture that does.
All about us were people. Perhaps a hundred. Men. Experience had taught me that humans were cruelest when segregated by sex, and the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach became led. What had I let my...
In a world where data is coin of the realm, and transmissions are guarded by no better sentinels than man-made codes and corruptible devices, there is no such thing as a secret.
I sold my soul for knowledge of the future, only to have that very pact render me forever ignorant (Gerald Tarrant).
Anger of any kind is a dangerous emotion, it eats at the nerves and eventually makes you careless
We are such cold creatures, all of us. Power robs us of our humanity. It’s an ancient formula, hard-wired into our brain cells, and any attempt to circumvent it is an exercise in futility.
Sometimes the decision is placed in your hands and you just have to go with it, right or wrong, according to what you think is best.
It struck Hsing suddenly that Masada didn't even understand the nature of his own genius. To him the patterns of thought and motive that he sensed in the virus were self-explanatory, and those who cou...
Advertising: the ultimate predator. He longed for the simplicity of the Gueran network, which simply did what it was supposed to and no more. When had these people lost touch with the fact that the pu...
Morality is the constant of human existence.
Fear would come in time, no doubt, but that did not mean she had to issue it a formal invitation.
Evil is what you make of it, the Prophet had written. Bind it to a higher Purpose, and you will have altered its nature. And: We use what tools we must. Damien
Those who support the concept of a direct interface network don’t take into account the price they would have to pay for it, in privacy and safety and a thousand other areas of concern. Do you really...
I stood balanced on the brink of madness. Insanity and longevity are a truly terrifying combination; if I gave in now, I might pay the price for centuries to come.
I dreamed of a beast in human form, that hunted men for pleasure. When they brought it down—at last, after many deaths—they cut it open. Only to find a wormlike thing coiled in a bed of slime at the c...