What else can you tell us about this batna, Surendranath? I learnt it from English traders in Surat, said the befuddled Surendranath, It stands for Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.
Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.
We are technocrats. We make decisions like engineers. Which doesn't always line up with what people imagine they want.
Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?Juanita shrugs.—What’s the difference?
Vitaly owns half a carton of Lucky Strikes, an electric guitar, and a hangover
Unfortunately, this category of secret is itself so secret that it's very existance is secret, and he can't actually reveal it to anyone.
To paraphrase Tolstoy, all rich places were alike, but each poor place was poor in its own way.
This one was called Ark Madiba, after a Moiran biologist of the Fourth Millennium who had in turn been named in memory of a hero of Old Earth.
This is an incredibly realistic training exercise—even down to the point of using ethnically correct pilots, and detonating fake explosives on the ships. Lawrence heartily approves. Things have just b...
This is a terrible country for old people. You put them away in horrible buildings that are completely shut off from life, and then do everything possible to keep them alive. It is a very stupid syste...
They were assembling a rocket there. It was a big rocket. It all more or less made sense. There was no cargo too big to be barged up the Columbia River and then trucked the last few miles to Moses Lak...
These Burbclaves! These citystates!So small, so insecure, that just about everything, like not mowing yourlawn, or playing your stereo too loud, becomes a national security issue.
There was no way that these guys were going to let a bleeding, barefoot woman simply wander off alone into the streets. Two of them were already running toward her with hands reaching out in a manner...
There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering s...
The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wr...
The stars’ positions were randomly generated, a fact that drove Pluto crazy.
The rule of thumb we’ve been using is that Deolaters are welcome as long as they’re not certain they’re right, I said. As soon as you’re sure you’re right, there’s no point in your being here.
The roads shed lanes, then insensibly narrowed, grew rougher and more tortuous, until without having noticed any sudden transitions we found ourselves driving on endless one-lane tracks and stopping t...
The result, a few moments later, was that the glider came snapping over the top just as its connection to the last flynk was severed. In a few seconds it had been hauled two thousand meters straight u...
The qualifications for being a Scout seemed to be a shocking level of physical endurance, a complete disregard for mortal danger, and some knowledge of how to exist in a space suit. All of them were R...