James Armstrong

“Posthuman. It was a word that came up in the media every five or six years, and it meant different things every time. Neural regrowth hormone? Posthuman. Sex robots with inbuilt pseudo intelligence? Posthuman. Self-optimizing network routing? Posthuman. It was a word from advertising copy, breathless and empty, and all he’d ever thought it really meant was that the people using it had a limited imagination about what exactly humans were capable of.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

“At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think?”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“I know why those librarians read the old stories to you,” Rex says. “Because if it’s told well enough, for as long as the story lasts, you get to slip the trap.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land