Game Designers

"“I’m disappointed in you, Mo: How could you imagine that the militarization of the police might be seen as a huge potential growth market by defense contractors?” “How indeed.”"

"The American mainstream news media have so far steered well clear of the subject because the phenomenon has been enthusiastically embraced by the talk radio fringe, leading to a death spiral of diminishing credibility."

"“I imagine looking after a sixteen-year-old must be a bit of a headache. ”“Oh, it’s mostly about building trust. She’s still in the ugh, parents, uncool stage, but she’s self-aware enough to know that it’s just something she’s going through. So I’m trying to give her enough space that she doesn’t feel the need to burn bridges she might want to maintain later. The best thing you can do is provide them with a support framework rather than a cage. Don’t try to micromanage and overprotect them, let them know they can come to you when they’ve got problems, and as long as they’ve got a reasonably level head, that’s what they’ll do.” He pauses. “And I try to keep a poker face whenever she introduces me to a boyfriend.”"

"And she actually looks—well, I’m not sure how to describe her. Scary is such an inadequate word, don’t you think?"

"If life hands your research department lemons and a recipe, you shouldn’t be surprised if they make lemonade for you. Or, better still, anti-lemonade countermeasures."

"Unfortunately his IQ seems to be off the scale, in the wrong direction."

"It’s amazing how much work you can get done in three days if you hold a blowtorch to each end of the candle."

"If pauses can be pregnant, this one’s on the run from a fertility clinic."

"Despair, dismay, disorientation, and delusion: the four horsemen of the bureaucratic apocalypse are coming my way."

"The home office hates vigilantes in Lycra fancy-dress outfits almost as much as they hate lawbreakers. You see, superheroes don’t follow the rules of evidence. They take procedural shortcuts, assault criminals, mess up crime scenes, and generally make it almost impossible to secure a conviction. Not to mention committing a basketload of offenses in their own right: aggravated trespass, assault, violating controlled airspace and flying without a license, breaking and entering, criminal damage..."

"(A WOMBAT is a Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time: the non-IT equivalent of a PEBCAK. (A PEBCAK is a Problem that Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. (You get the picture: it’s parenthesized despair all the way down.)))"

"Basically it’s a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement. Right now it has convinced Pete that it is harmless, but I know better: just give them thumbs and in no time at all they’ll have us working in the tuna mines, delivering cans from now until eternity."

"Having a policy based on works of fiction is worse than having no policy at all."

"“But has it occurred to you that there might be a reason for that?” “I can think of several.” I cross my legs. “Mostly ranging from the inane to the criminally irresponsible.”"

"We use committees for all the ulterior purposes for which they might have been designed: diffusion of executive responsibility, plausible deniability, misdirection, providing the appearance of activity without the substance, and protecting the guilty."

"I promise not to hammer a stake through your heart or set you on fire, as long as you promise not to rip my throat out. Okay? We in the twenty-first century have this marvelous technical innovation; it’s called civilization, and it means we don’t have to make promises like that to everyone we meet because we can usually take it for granted."

"Superficial appearances are misleading precisely because, so much of the time, they’re accurate."

"The five stages of bureaucratic grieving are: denial, anger, committee meetings, scapegoating, and cover-up."

"Almost everything in the pop culture lexicon of vampirism is basically fiction—and fiction is the art of telling entertaining lies for money."

"One of the great besetting problems of the modern age is what to do with too much information."

"Vampires can’t exist. There’d be detailed records in the archives; they couldn’t possibly evade detection by the state for any significant period. Besides which...there’d be corpses everywhere. Human blood is a poor nutrient source; it’s about 60 percent plasma by volume and only provides about 900 calories per liter, so your hypothetical blood-sucking fiend is going to have to drink about two and a half liters per day. Those calories don’t come in the form of useful stuff like glucose and fat: it’s mostly protein from circulating red blood cells. Dracula would have to exsanguinate a victim every day just to stay alive, and would suffer from chronic ketoacidosis. The total number of intentional homicides for the whole country is around 700 a year; a single vampire would cause a 50 percent spike in the murder rate. Or they’d have to take transfusion-sized donations about two thousand times a year."

"You win some, you lose some. And when you lose, you have to pull yourself together and go back for more. Otherwise, the other side wins by default."

"“You grew up during the second oil crunch, didn’t you?” Sirhan prods. “What was it like then?” “What was it ...? Oh, gas hit fifty bucks a gallon, but we still had plenty for bombers,” she says dismissively. “We knew it would be okay.”"

"“Talk you of tradition in middle of singularity.” Sister Seventh twisted her head around to look out the windows at the foggy evening drizzle beyond. “Perplexity maximizes. Not understand singularity is discontinuity with all tradition? Revolution is necessary; deconstruct the old, ring in the new. Before, I questioned your sapience. Now, your sanity questionable; sapience not. Only sapient organism could exhibit superlative irrationality!”"

"Quote, the viability of a postsingularity economy of scarcity is indicated by the transition from an indirection-layer-based economy using markers of exchange of goods and services to a tree-structured economy characterized by optimal allocation of productivity systems in accordance with iterated tit-for-tat prisoner’s dilemma. Money is a symptom of poverty and inefficiency. Unquote."

"“I Critic am. Critics follow Festival for many lifetimes. We come to Criticize. First want I to know, am I Criticizing sapients? Or is just puppet show on cave wall of reality? Zombies or zimboes? Shadows of mind? Amusements for Eschaton? A shiver ran up and down Burya’s spine. “I think I’m sapient,” he said cautiously. “Of course, I’d say that even if I wasn’t, wouldn’t I? Your question is unanswerable. So why ask it?” Sister Seventh leaned forward. “None of your people ask anything,” she hissed. “Food, yes. Guns, yes. Wisdom? No. Am beginning think you not aware of selves, ask nothing.”"

"“Didn’t I have you executed last week?” “I very much doubt. It.”"

"As every secret policeman knows, there is no such thing as a coincidence; the state has too many enemies."

"I am the Eschaton. I am not your God. I am descended from you, and exist in your future. Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else."

"Before the singularity, human beings living on Earth had looked at the stars and consoled themselves in their isolation with the comforting belief that the universe didn’t care. Unfortunately, they were mistaken."

"Any job I do—if it doesn’t work, somebody pays. Possibly hundreds or thousands of somebodies. That’s the price of good engineering; nobody notices you did your job right."

"The first rule of space travel...is that mistakes are fatal. Space isn’t friendly; it kills you. And there are no second chances.”"

"“Hello, Martin. What can I do for you?” “Got a problem.” “A big one?” “Female human-sized.”"

"The sheer waste of human potential that was the New Republic’s raison d’être offended her sensibilities as badly as a public book-burning, or a massacre of innocents."

"“Freedom?” The word tastes bitter. “What’s freedom ever done for me? Seems to me I’ve been free almost all my life, but what has it gotten me? Really?” She’s silent for only a moment. “Ask not what it’s gotten you, kid. Ask what it’s saved you from.”"

"Our Creators reverted to this state—they slid sideways into the cultural stasis—at a point where their population was shrinking and aging. The late twenty-first and early twenty-second centuries were not good times for them: Economic deflation, ecosystem failure, wars, resource depletion, and the end of the western Enlightenment program of the natural sciences coincided poisonously with the availability of cheap slaves to serve their every need, and the near perfection of entertainment media to distract them from the wreckage of their once-beautiful world."

"Politics is shit; it corrupts everything it touches, and getting involved in it only leads to misery and dissatisfaction."

"Never trust a man who thinks his religion gives him all the answers."

"I’m not going to make the mistake of appealing to your patriotism: It’s a deflating currency these days, and an ambiguous one. But I would like to put a word in for ethics, fair play, and enlightened self-interest."

"There used to be an old joke in role-playing circles—it isn’t funny these days—that there were only a thousand real people in the UK—everybody else was a non-player character. Now it’s pretty much the reverse."

"Liz isn’t simply not going by the book, she’s just about throwing it in the shredder."

"“You have an evil mind!” “And this is a bad thing how, exactly?”"

"It’s a thing of beauty, the ability to spin the cloth of reality, and you’re a sucker for it: Isn’t story-telling what being human is all about?"

"You know there’s no advantage to be gained by murdering idiots—it doesn’t teach the idiot anything and it might give onlookers the idea that you take them seriously."

"Adams fancies himself as a big swinging dick in risk analytics: Leave out the “big” and “swinging” and he’s right."

"“Bad day at the office?” “It’s always a bad day at the office, insofar as the office exists in the first place.”"

"Where would dictators be without our compliant amnesia? Make the collective lose its memory, you can conceal anything."

"You know, if I tried to change the minds of everyone who I thought needed changing, I’d never have time to do anything else."

"Can I remember— “I remember lots,” I say. How much of what I remember is true is another matter."

"I killed you! And you didn’t even notice!"