Adrian

“What would you have done in the old days?’ he asked. ‘If you’d been piloting a gnat with this kind of damage?’ ‘Flown it back to a workshop in the Peerless for repairs.’ ‘And if you couldn’t use the engines until the repairs were completed?’ Tarquinia said, ‘Then I’d call someone for a tow. See how a lifetime of experience has prepared me for this moment?”
― Greg Egan

“Tarquinia said, ‘See, you’re a natural.’ Agata took a moment to process the remark for traces of sarcasm. She said, ‘There’s only one downside if I get us back safely.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘I don’t want anyone believing that they could put their life in my hands.’ ‘Because . . . ?’ ‘I think we’ll all be much safer,’ Agata explained, ‘if everyone around me is so terrified of the prospect of relying on me in an emergency that they work twice as hard to ensure that it never comes to that.’ Tarquinia said, ‘Don’t worry: there’s nothing you can do to rob me of my healthy respect for the possibility that your incompetence will kill me.”
― Greg Egan

“Sadeq, being human, has fantasies by the dozen, but he doesn’t dare permit himself to succumb to temptation. I’m not dead, he reasons; therefore, how can I be in Paradise? Therefore, this must be a false paradise, a temptation sent to lead me astray. Probably. Unless I am dead, because Allah, peace be unto him, considers a human soul separated from its body to be dead. But if that’s so, isn’t uploading a sin? In which case, this can’t be Paradise because I am a sinner. Besides which, this whole setup is so puerile!”
― Charles Stross, Accelerando

“Inertia propulsion!” Pierre exclaimed. “On our last shift we were teaching them Newton’s law of gravity. Today they have inertia drives! Where will they be tomorrow?” “They probably will be able to control space and time and won’t have to bother with such clumsy things as black hole gravity generators and inertia drives,” Amalita replied. “But now I see why we were so awkward. Their main spacecraft will stay fifteen meters away from our spacecraft, but it is so massive that we will experience about one-third of a gee from it, pulling me out of the console chair and over to the viewing port. I guess I could manage to twirl once as I fall so they can see the human joints in action, but I bet I am going to be clumsier in one-third gee than that animation.” She turned from the screen and looked at him, “I wish you were doing my part, so I could get to see the cheela.” “I don’t know whether you would like it,” Pierre said. “According to this contour plot of the gravity field from the individual craft, although the size and mass of the flitters are much smaller than the main spacecraft, this one is going to come up to less than one meter from my viewing port and my nose is going to be pulling three gees!” He looked down at her body and grinned, “I guess the reason they didn’t choose you is they must know you don’t wear a bra in free-fall and they didn’t want to give you reverse Cooper’s droop.” Amalita turned back to the display, jabbing him with her elbow as she did so, and brought up the next screen full of instructions.”
― Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg