At root, I think that any given technology (think nuclear power, gunpowder, the written word...) has the potential to improve our lives, wound it, and also to create unexpected accidents. It's not the...
I'm particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works.
Science fiction has these obsessions with certain sciences - large scale engineering, neuroscience.
I was interested in political failure here in the U.S. The way we're failing to work together to solve even our smallest problems, let alone the complex ones.
I'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie, and things are smooth.
Back home, we can't kill them fast enough, he says. Even Grahamites offer blue bills for their skins. Probably the only thing they've ever done that I agreed with.Mmm, yes. Emiko's brow wrinkles thoug...
It’s still a load. If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we’d be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities, shipping marble and steel and copper and getting paid Red C...
Everything’s bad, until you find something worse.
Crew up, Nailer!" Lucky Girl shouted. "You think I'm going to pull your ass up here like a damn swank?
They’d blame a castoff just for breathing. You could be good as gold and they’d still blame you.
Start by loving, instead of needing.
Thanks to the centrifugal pump, places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas had thrown on the garments of fertility for a century, pretending to greenery and growth as they mined glacial water f...
Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.
The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, rid...
No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape...
Tool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness.
The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken. People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and it kept going,...
Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.
Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way if justice.
A gamble. Everything was a damn gamble. Betting against luck and the Fates, again and again, and again. She kept walking, waiting for the bullet.
