Cyberpunk Authors

"He said—let me get this right—he said that among the chief reasons we can’t cope with the consequence of our own ingenuity is that whenever a genuinely open-minded teacher tries to pass that attitude on to his pupils, the entrenched authorities grow frightened and shut his mouth."

"That’s behind me. Same as with everything else in my life, though, I approached what I learned with eyes and ears half-closed. It’s only now I realise how dangerous and destructive Christian culture has become. If there was ever any love in it, it’s been bled out. Three major religions preach Holy War: Shintoism, Islam, and Christianity. Christianity is the only one hypocritical enough simultaneously to enjoin its followers to turn the other cheek and suffer fools gladly and the rest of it. Look at the record. Germany was a Christian country almost exactly one hundred times as long as it was Nazi. Did the Nazis undo in twelve years all the church had done in twelve centuries? No, they built on it. Hitler was a baptised Catholic and never excommunicated. When he was enlisting the support of the bishops in 1933 he promised to do nothing to the Jews that the church had not already, and kept his promise."

"Are we not natural creatures? Are we not evolved, too? Surely all the lessons we’ve learned in the past century come to a single point: we have to stop thinking of ourselves as somehow apart from nature, and recognise that we’re inseparable from it."

"How do you get away with it? Above all, how do you persuade people to risk their lives in order to kill total strangers whom they know almost literally nothing about? Why, the answer’s simple. You lie to them!"

"If you kill a dozen people by sniping at them from a roof-top, you’re a criminal. Unless you had a uniform on. Then you get a medal."

"“So what do you think will happen?” Sawyer asked the barman who was drawing his mid-morning pint. “Dunno,” the man grunted. “Except one thing. I know we’ve been led by fools and rogues, but this is the first time we’ve ever been led by a criminal!”"

"We are agreed that before we kill each other we should better serve mankind by killing those who order us to kill each other."

"“I was brought up as a Christian,” Cissy said. “Spelt K-I-L-L-J-O-Y. My mam still is one. When I said I was going to quit the church because of what I’d learned from Val about the history of slavery, I thought she was going to kill me!” She laughed nervously. But obviously that was not a joke."

"How can a man be so brilliant and so obtuse?"

"There’s an old saying: The genius sees what happens, but the plodder sees what he expects to happen."

"I simply can’t make myself believe that if they’d been handicapped by belief in capricious supernatural beings they’d have achieved what they did."

"We’ve been amazingly lucky, which is another way of saying we’ve kept our eyes and minds open and responded when something turned up."

"First we had the legs race. Then we had the arms race. Now we're going to have the brain race. And, if we're lucky, the final stage will be the human race."

"It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with."

""But I was never put on trial, never convicted!" "You are not entitled to a trial." "Anybody's entitled to a trial, damn you!" "That is absolutely true. But you see you are not anybody. You are nobody."

"The theory was and always had been: this is the thing the solid citizen has no need to worry about. Important, later all-important question: what about the hollow citizen?"

"One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It's of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it's very important to a person."

"If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."

"Get me a drink of water, please, and something to quiet my belly. It’s rumbling so much I can’t hear myself think."

"Most rich people get rich by taking what they want without paying for it. It’s the way of the world."

"If there is a hell, perhaps it consists in living up to all one’s promises."

"No faith can possibly suffice. It’s always undermined by ignorance."

"“I see what Gene is driving at. To dream of changing the whole universe in accordance with a set of local preconceptions!...Oh, it’s ridiculous!” “A missionary,” Gene repeated with a solemn nod. “By definition: a person who does without intending it more harm than good.”"

"The writers who influenced me most tended to be those who were the most prolific. John Brunner was very prolific-my favorites are Polymath, The Whole Man, and The Long Result..."

"John Brunner, who writes one extraordinary book to ten into-one-end-of-the-typewriter-and-out-the-other, adventure by the yard commodities"

"This year we take our vacation somewhere else. Where is there where Americans aren’t likely to be stoned by a howling mob? Spain, Greece? No, got to be out of range of the stench from the Med. Looks like we might as well stay home."

"Cham Loc knew little of affairs of state, but he was aware that whenever politicians talked about matters of inflexible principle, life was scheduled to become even more difficult that usual."

"“And there are more idiots than suckers in the world,” Barney said with a rueful chuckle. “One every second, not one a minute, right?”"

"If you so much as touch him, I’ll have to smash every bone in your body—twice, to make sure I didn’t miss any the first time. I don’t recommend the experience."

"Joel groaned softly. “I-ah-I don’t think I was altogether myself,” he excused. “Are you ever?” Bertrand countered. “What?” “I am always my self, even when my objurgatory circuits are cut in by some frustration-inducing outside event. But you’re invariably either drunk or suffering indigestion or still half-asleep or so excited as to be manic or so downcast as to be suicidal or—” Loftily Joel broke in: “That’s part of the marvel and wonder of the subjective human experience, not susceptible machine analysis.” He gulped the last of his brandy and set the glass aside. “And we are a fantastic species really, aren’t we? For all our shortcomings! I mean, well—here I am talking to a machine, for pity’s sake, a machine, a manufactured article! So cleverly designed, it’s impossible to tell that its responses are programmed in, not the result of intelligence.” “I resent that,” Bertrand said, but Joel ignored the comment."

"A doctor is as good as the researchers backing him up."

"And by the way, it’s knowledge that moves mountains, you know, not faith."

"Colin felt a shiver pass down his spine. What man, granted total power, could refrain from using it? And would not his first target inevitably be his fellow men?"

"Now, listen. Marriage is binding as a civil contract, but it has—like all my favorite contracts—an escape clause. I make my living by spotting them."

"A determined elbow jabbed him in the ribs, and he had to come close enough to waking to resist the nudges. He put both arms around his petite, dark, power-packed wife, Midge, and uttered an optimistic grunt. Seven years of marriage enabled her to translate: “Five more minutes?”"

"Some people—mostly attractive women—don’t believe attractive women can act."

"I don’t believe you can cow people into loyalty. Subservience, maybe. But then you must always trust the retainer who guards your back."

"Their lusts had known no limit until now. They had gorged themselves, surpassed their own imaginings again and again, recklessly squandering what they had supposed to be inexhaustible; they had been like children in a house filled with sweetmeats, destroying what they could not consume. Until now. Now it was as though the planet itself was sick of their arrogance."

"Men change their gods, and when they have changed them often enough they cease to fear their power."

"Amid the turmoil of change, old people could do no more than wonder what had hit them, and long without enthusiasm for the simpler past."

"Independence has limits. But dependence has, too. I want to set some for myself, that’s all."

"One of the first benefits of an improved standard of living, as he had already been superficially aware, is to postpone the age at which a person’s opinions congeal for life. Someone forced by poverty to avoid spending on enlarging his horizons the energy and time needed simply for staying alive adopted the attitudes, ready-made, of his environment. This was why students formed the backbone of so many revolutionary movements, for instance."

"A cripple can still be a person, but in what sense is a lunatic human? Humanity’s in the mind, in the tangle of thoughts spun by the brain, and once that’s gone what remains is human only in outward shape."

"—Why can I never visualize things turning out better as clearly as I can visualize the catastrophes I scraped past by a hair? “Everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds!” Hah!"

"He regarded himself as inhabiting a jungle in which behind masks of civilised behavior and conventional politeness everybody, doctor or not, was out for what he could get. No means of enhancing his reputation, status and income escaped him."

"—Among the other things lunatics make: their own version of truth."

"—What was I thinking earlier about lunatics making their own version of truth? Why specify lunatics?"

"—If I ever get good at hospital politics, I think I shall start to hate myself."

"—Blessed are they who expect the worst, for they shall get it!"

"Did you never hear it said that what sets the genius apart from the plodder is the ability to see what happens and not what he expects to happen?"