Postcyberpunk Quotes

“Those who wake...do not regret the dream.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“I always forget that half of the people who watch us fly are waiting to see us die.”
― Maureen F. McHugh

“I don't believe in socialism but I don't believe in capitalism either. We are small, governments are large, we survive in the cracks. Cold comfort.”
― Maureen F. McHugh

“I want to tell you that it's horrible. I want to tell you that being suppressed makes every moment of existence a torment, because maybe that would help--but it would be a lie. In fact, the most horrible thing is how easy it is to slide into contentment, how hard it is to nourish anger or regret. If you lose the sense of smell, say, or taste, you'd grieve for it; but if you were born without that sense, you'd never miss it. That's how it was for me--the sense was gone, as though it has never been. For the first few years after suppression, I kept myself in misery by sheer effort of will, trying to imagine, every day, what it was that I had lost. But in the end, it became to much trouble. I gave in to the inevitable. I forgot.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“I had recognized her. They had tried to tear her out, but she had lived in me--deep in my heart and secret, nameless and indescribable, yet never entirely gone. She had been a face in the window of every departing train, a form seen from the back on every crowded street, always just out of my sight, always turning away. And I had known her when she came to me, though I could not say it, and though the very thought had sent my mind skidding across the ice into unconsciousness.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“Najia can feel yts subdermal activators against her forearm. Not man not woman not both not neither. Nute. Another way of being human, speaking a phsyical language she does not understand. More alien to her than any man, any father, yet this body next to hers is loyal, tough, funny courageous, clever, kind, sensual, vulnerable. Sweet. Sexy. All you could wish in a friend of the soul. Or a lover.”
― Ian McDonald, River of Gods

“The implants just give you a new set of reproductive-free imperatives, that's all. The rest, thank the gods, is up to you. They wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't give rise to the most troubling and complex problems of the heart. They are what makes all this glory, this madness worthwhile. We are born to the trouble as sparks fly upwards, that is what is great about us, man, woman, transgen, nute.”
― Ian McDonald, River of Gods

“the briefest flash of pale, pale ice over a thin-boned shoulder. Neon caught the red lotus splayed on her elbow and lit it on fire.”
― K.C. Alexander, Nanoshock

“Lou otworzyła oczy, a słowa momentalnie uwięzły jej w gardle. Córka zdjęła rękawice i
jednym szybkim ruchem wyrwała moduł komunikacyjny z przedramienia lewej ręki. Następnie zrobiła krótki gest dłonią i zabrała się za mechaniczne blokady hełmu.
– Raq! Jasna cholera! Co ty wyprawiasz?!
Kobieta rzuciła się, by ją powstrzymać, ale lęk przestrzeni natychmiast przypomniał o sobie. Straciła równowagę, a gdy podniosła wzrok, Raq była już kilka metrów dalej. Hełm z jej dłoni powędrował prosto w bezdenną przepaść.”
― Andrzej Wronka, Iluzja

“...you think cabling is unnatural--that's what your arguments all come down to. But it's not. Not between people that really fit. Maya, do you have any idea how unlikely it is that two structures as complex as minds could be joined like that? It's like picking up two stones at random and discovering that they fit together perfectly. It isn't a coincidence, it can't be. They fit together so easily--like reuniting something that should never have been broken, filling in some ancient wound...”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“The mind has doors...even as the body does. And when you drill new holes, you tap old hungers.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“I'd caught what cameras call an updraft: just as the viewers got over the first rush of interest, others smelled the excitement and tuned in. The surprise of the newcomers strengthened the scent, attracting still more people, in a spiral that could make the feedback escalate out of control. Wave upon wave of astonishment crashed through me. I tried to look down, but the curiosity of millions forced my head back up. I stood there staring at the whale like someone forced to look into the sun, unable to turn away, though my mind cringed from the sight and my eyes were burning. It was not just an updraft, but riptide: feedback so strong that it flooded out my own emotions and derailed my thoughts. The audience grew so large and so greedy that it wouldn't even let me blink.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“What is a medium like telepresence but the extension--no, the very definition--of ourselves? Are we, who live things at a distance, the same species as our ancestors, we could hear of events in the same town only by going there? If you met a person from that time, would you have any more in common with him than with a whale, or a chimpanzee? You have traveled to meet me with better than seven-league boots; and I have done more math this morning than Pythagoras, and Euclid, and all Ancient Greece and Rome. Surely, if we are human, they were animals; and we a race of gods, if they were men.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“...it changes the central fact of the human condition: that each of us lives behind one set of eyes, and not another; that our own pain is an agony, and another's pain only an abstraction we believe in by an act of faith. It makes impossible all the sins of locality, all the errors that arise from being prisoned in one body and no other--as racism, sexism, classism, and of course and especially nationalism.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“...the wires he wore had grown all through him, as the roots of trees replace the flesh of corpses; and the vast coils of the whale's brain wrapped around him like a gray constricting snake. I pitied him: but it was probably stray feedback from the Net...”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“Feel no regret for roses, autumn too has its delights...How could she say that? Didn't she see that for us there could never be autumn, that we could never sit, as anyone else could sit, beside the fire all day on Sundays in November; that September's leaves, that fall for man and beast alike, were not our leaves to walk in; that October storms would never find us sharing an umbrella? The love of spring had thrived on wine and candles; now in the August of our lives, we needed newspapers and comfortable chairs. But it was impossible. No autumn--only a cold wind that blew through our summer, freezing the leaves in their places before they could motley and fall.”
― Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

“Tears of pain are as regular as blood and piss.”
― K.C. Alexander, Nanoshock

“For a strained moment, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear anything but the shattered pulse of a hammered artery struggling to keep up; fury carved in stinging wasps.”
― K.C. Alexander, Nanoshock

“Reed had once warned that brains were untrustworthy – that like any computer, they could be hacked.”
― K.C. Alexander, Nanoshock

“...as my fist drove through her ribs. Bone cracked. Shifted. The numbers in my optics hit steel-bending digits and Muerte lost her footing. My meat flagged, but the arm Orchard had fixed up and the shoulder girdle she’d strengthened didn’t.”
― K.C. Alexander, Nanoshock

“Don’t you talk to me about debt. You think you know what debt is? Debt is an abusive husband. Everyone says ‘why don't you just leave him, why don’t you be strong’ but you can’t. He’ll follow you and make it worse. He shows up at your work drunk and angry. He calls your family in the middle of the night and tells them lies about you. He’s in your finances. He’s got your passwords. He threatens your friends to find out where you are. Until you’re up four nights straight trying to build up the strength to check your email, I don’t want to hear another word out of your fucking mouth about debt.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“Directional acoustics. In a place that sells sounds, they’re a must.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“It’s an open secret that the sneakernet is used for a lot more than moving a few dozen terabytes more quickly than you could across the lines. The kids — "chucks" in local argot — pick up your external drive and walk it to wherever you want to send it. Along the way they add on a few other jobs, like grabbing prepaids from some chick and delivering them to the person she owes. Most of the industry uses them.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“Watch batteries gleam in the center of dark flowers. Henna painted with conductive ink, waiting to be turned on.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“She tries to envision a life without the debt, but can’t string the thoughts together in the right order. The debt is all there has ever been. It makes all her decisions for her. Chooses who she is going to be.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“The ocean was still and gray as a post-consumer touchscreen when she first spotted the island from the boat’s railing. A shade, a line which didn’t belong under the bright overcast sky.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“You hide things to change what’s real. I make images to create what’s real. Appearance and reality.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“most 3D printer artists use the tech to create their visions to perfection. You just take existing things and mess with them. It’s like if the Venus de Milo's arms weren’t lopped off, just misprinted. That’s not art. That’s a hack, nothing more.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“there’s something unnatural about the feelings we have for people who’ve hurt us. About hate. It’s a connection. We want to know if they’re alive or dead, where they are in the world. As much as their faces bring terror, that part of us that allowed them to hurt us in the first place still hungers.”
― Alex Livingston, Glitch Rain

“Gene replacement therapy--they tell me it really hurts.

It always hurts... It all hurts. Everything hurts. For as long as you can still feel it.”
― Bruce Sterling, Heavy Weather