Husband and wife seems like a less interesting and committed relationship than Holden and Naomi
Humanity had come as far as it had in a haze of war, sickness, violence, and genocide. History was drenched in blood. But it also had cooperation and kindness, generosity, intermarriage. The one didn’...
How the fuck do you keep your hair like that? I look like a hedgehog’s been humping my skull.
Holden's an idiot, but he's not stupid. If he realizes he's being watched, he'll start broadcasting pictures of all our Ganymede sources or something. Do not underestimate his capacity to fuck things...
Holden shot him in the throat. Somewhere in his brain stem, Detective Miller nodded in approval.
Holden rose, nodded to Fred, and left. Naomi walked at his side. Wow, that was close, she said under her breath. Once they’d left the office, Holden said, I think Fred was half a second from ordering...
Holden had once dated a Buddhist who said that death was merely a different state of being, and people only feared the unknown that lay behind that transition. Death without warning was preferable, as...
History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect.
History itself was a massive n=1 study, irreproducible. It was what made it so difficult to learn from.
His lieutenant chuckled. Here, kiddies, the lieutenant said. We blew the shit out of your station, have some free MREs and UN Marine sticker books. Fred didn’t laugh.
He wouldn’t miss the planet, but he would miss the people. Just like always.
He was covered in blood. He was pretty sure it was all Butch’s, but not a hundred percent. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, he missed things like getting shot. He
He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time.
For something that had been expecting prokaryotic anaerobes, it was doing a bang-up job of making do.
Everyone too busy trying to survive to spend any time creating something new.
Epithets like that are an attempt to dehumanize a group so that you won't feel as bad about killing them.
Easy to make rules, Emma said. Easy to make systems with a perfect logic and rigor. All you need to do is leave out the mercy, yeah? Then when you put people into it and they get chewed to nothing, it...
Duty isn’t a buffet where you pick what you want and ignore the rest.
Desperate psychotic people do desperate psychotic things when they’re exposed. I refuse to grant them immunity from exposure out of fear of their reaction. When you do, the desperate psychos wind up i...
Conspiracy theories come up whenever people feel like the universe is too random. Absurd. If it’s all an enemy plot, at least there’s someone calling the shots.