Topic: abortion
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.161)
She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community.
Topic: acceptance
All Systems Red (p.116)
I felt the brush of Mensah’s awareness in the feed. She must have woken when Gurathin spoke. He finally said, “You don’t blame humans for what you were forced to do? For what happened to you?”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.139)
“Being weird doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve companionship.”
Topic: achievement
All Systems Red (pp.126-127)
That got their attention. There was no reply. Not a surprise. The only people I’ve run into who actually want to get into conversations with SecUnits are my weird humans. I said, “I have an alternate solution to both our problems.”
Space Opera (p.147)
“Dying happens to everyone, even stars. Even the stuff between stars. But if you believe in yourself and achieve your goals, you can die so hard that no one will ever forget you, and that’s almost as good as not dying at all.”
Space Opera (p.39)
You’re just shy of figuring out how to shuffle your horde of hormone-curdled control-obsessed malignant narcissists offworld.
Topic: anxiety
All Systems Red (p.16)
I tried to be as much like an appliance as possible, clamping the wounds where they told me to, using my failing body temperature to try to keep her warm, and keeping my head down so I couldn’t see them staring at me.
Space Opera (p.219)
But most people can only be so anxious and so terrified and so sleepless and so cowed and awed before the yawning abyss of the future for so long. Eventually, the body simply can’t sustain it. Eventually, some work has to get done. Eventually, adrenal glands need a bit of a break.
Space Opera (p.17)
… everybody was terribly distracted by the seemingly unending, white-hot, existential, logistical, mostly mundane troubles of their own day-to-day lives.
Topic: appearance
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.141)
But Aeluons, by some weird fluke of evolution, had a look that made most Humans drop their jaws, hold up their palms and say, “Okay, you are a superior species.”
Topic: art
Space Opera (p.55)
Nobody understood what the Absolute Zeros believed so hard, they couldn’t even wedge it into their lyrics yet: The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.
Space Opera (p.147)
“Dying happens to everyone, even stars. Even the stuff between stars. But if you believe in yourself and achieve your goals, you can die so hard that no one will ever forget you, and that’s almost as good as not dying at all.”
Space Opera (pp.254-255)
“I wish I were someone else. Someone you could rely on to turn it out no matter what. I’m afraid that whatever I had is lost by now. I haven’t had a song out in years. I haven’t had a good day in years. What if I get up there and just completely blow it? Or worse, what if I get up there and give the performance of my sorry life, the best show in the history of me, if the light of the world comes beaming out of me like a bloody Care Bear Stare for the ages, and it’s not good enough? If you lot somehow hear in my voice all the worst of us?”
Topic: aspiration
All Systems Red (p.147)
Supposed to want.
Topic: autonomy
All Systems Red (p.147)
Supposed to want.
All Systems Red (p.48)
Mensah’s expression said she was worried. She looked at me. “What do you think?”
Topic: awareness
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.207)
“We have different philosophies, you and I, but I can understand where you’re coming from. Violence is always disconcerting, even if it’s only potential violence. But after the trouble you recently found yourself in– not to mention the place you’re headed to– it sounds as if you could do with some basic tools of self-defense. If that only constitutes shielding for you, that’s okay. But you need something.”
Topic: balance
All Systems Red (p.111)
“Dr. Mensah is the current admin director on the steering committee. It’s an elected position, with a limited term. But one of the principles of our home is that our admins must also continue their regular work, whatever it is. Her regular work required this survey, so here she is, and here we are.”
Space Opera (p.78)
“I’m…I’m the coyote. I make the most magnificent contraptions, and I always think this time, this time everyone will see how good I really am, but they only ever burn me up and leave me starving to death.”
Topic: belonging
All Systems Red (p.16)
I tried to be as much like an appliance as possible, clamping the wounds where they told me to, using my failing body temperature to try to keep her warm, and keeping my head down so I couldn’t see them staring at me.
All Systems Red (p.20)
I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous. Also, if I’m not in the armor then it’s because I’m wounded and one of my organic parts may fall off and plop on the floor at any moment and no one wants to see that.
All Systems Red (pp.143-144)
The thing that surprised me is that nobody stared at us. Nobody gave us a second look. The uniform, the pants, the long-sleeved T-shirt and jacket, covered all my inorganic parts. If they noticed the dataport in the back of my neck they must have thought I was an augmented human. We were just three more people making our way down the ring. It hit me that I was just as anonymous in a crowd of humans who didn’t know each other as I was in my armor, in a group of other SecUnits.
All Systems Red (p.21)
Mensah had seen me when she signed the rental contract. But she had barely looked at me and I had barely looked at her because again, murderbot + actual human = awkwardness. Keeping the armor on all the time cuts down on unnecessary interaction.
All Systems Red (p.27)
Part of it is, they didn’t want me here. Not here in their hub, but here on the planet.
All Systems Red (p.33)
I had worked for some contracts that would have kept me standing here the entire day and night cycle, just on the off chance they wanted me to do something and didn’t want to bother using the feed to call me. Then she added, “You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.119)
Alongside such oddities, his small stature was nothing special. It was hard to feel weird in a place where everybody was weird.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.28)
“Rosemary, on behalf of the crew of the Wayfarer, I would like to apologize,” Sissix said. “Coming into a new home deserves a better welcome than anything Artis Corbin can give. I’m sure you know all about the escape pods by now, and nothing about who we are and what we do.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.30)
The trappings of a bureaucrat trying to pretend he had the same clout as the powerful species around him.
Space Opera (p.197)
“We have always believed that one of the hallmarks of sentience is the ability to look down upon others.”
Space Opera (p.227)
“As far as quality housemates to be found on Planet Earth, it goes: dolphins, elephants, orangutans, octopi, then every single spider, then Joan of Arc, the Dalai Lama, Mr. Rogers, Freddie Mercury, my nan, all the scorpions, German measles, a dented recycling bin, and then maybe some of the rest of us. It’s grim.”
Space Opera (p.31)
It blossomed all over again into cosmic grief at the ultimate impossibility of communication between two living beings.
Space Opera (p.39)
You’re just shy of figuring out how to shuffle your horde of hormone-curdled control-obsessed malignant narcissists offworld.
Topic: bureaucracy
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.61)
The Friends of Digital Sapients were one of those organizations that had their hearts in the right place but their heads firmly up their asses. On paper, Jenks believed a lot of the same things they did, namely that AIs were sapient individuals worthy of the same leagl rights that everyone else had. But the FDS went about it all wrong.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.30)
The trappings of a bureaucrat trying to pretend he had the same clout as the powerful species around him.
Topic: comfort
All Systems Red (p.16)
I tried to be as much like an appliance as possible, clamping the wounds where they told me to, using my failing body temperature to try to keep her warm, and keeping my head down so I couldn’t see them staring at me.
Topic: commitment
All Systems Red (p.102)
It’s wrong to think of a construct as a half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.
All Systems Red (p.103)
I didn’t want to do it. Now more than ever. They knew too much about me. But I needed them to trust me so I could keep them alive and keep doing my job. The good version of my job, not the half-assed version of my job that I’d been doing before things started trying to kill my clients. I still didn’t want to do it.
All Systems Red (p.111)
“Dr. Mensah is the current admin director on the steering committee. It’s an elected position, with a limited term. But one of the principles of our home is that our admins must also continue their regular work, whatever it is. Her regular work required this survey, so here she is, and here we are.”
Topic: communication
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.4)
Ashby sighed, swallowed his irritation and became the captain. He kept his face neutral, his ears open. Talking to Corbin always required a moment of preparation, and a good deal of detachment.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.39)
Dr. Chef shook his head, the skin on his cheeks shivering. “I don’t like implants that aren’t medically necessary. Besides, what’s the point of talking to different species if you don’t take the time to learn their words? Seems like cheating to simply think things and let the little box do the talking for you.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.135)
“Yeah, stuff that’s really important or hard to say. Like about love or hate or stuff you’re scared about. You know how when you have something big to tell someone, you stammer through it or sit in front of your mirror practicing what to say? Aandrisks don’t bother with that. They let the gestures take care of all the awkwards. They figure that big, deep feelings are universal enough to be defined with just a flick of the hand or whatever, even though the events that cause those feelings are unique.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.10)
Ashby’s hackles were up, but truthfully, this was an ideal way for a conversation with Corbin to go. Get him away from the crew, let him vent, wait for him to cross a line, then talk him down while he was feeling penitent.
Space Opera (p.36)
I can’t wait for your monarchs to decide to hide it, lose control of the narrative, deny the evidence, call me a weather balloon, confess and resign, and finally leak a half-redacted version of what I tried to say to a newspaper friendly to one faction or another.
Topic: community
All Systems Red (p.103)
I didn’t want to do it. Now more than ever. They knew too much about me. But I needed them to trust me so I could keep them alive and keep doing my job. The good version of my job, not the half-assed version of my job that I’d been doing before things started trying to kill my clients. I still didn’t want to do it.
All Systems Red (p.33)
I had worked for some contracts that would have kept me standing here the entire day and night cycle, just on the off chance they wanted me to do something and didn’t want to bother using the feed to call me. Then she added, “You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.4)
But the constant sounds of people working and laughing and fighting all around him had become a comfort. The open was an empty place to be, and there were moments when even the most seasoned spacer might look to the star-flecked void outside with humility and awe.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.79)
Dr. Chef exhaled a disparaging rumble and fixed his beady eyes on Rosemary. “Some advice? If Kizzy ever says the words ‘you know what would be a great idea?,’ ignore whatever comes after.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.90)
A past birthday gift from Kizzy, who always ignored the fact that none of the non-Human crew members traditionally celebrated birthdays.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.119)
Alongside such oddities, his small stature was nothing special. It was hard to feel weird in a place where everybody was weird.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.159)
“I think that’s normal for anyone living with people other than their own. I’m sure they get tired of us, too.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.206)
“It’s our hobby,” Bear said. “We only sell them to neighbors and trusted friends. We’re not in the business of equipping bad guys. But if you want to discourage bad guys, oh yeah, we can do that.”
Space Opera (p.118)
“Everyone’s always saying love is the element that binds the universe together, but that’s a load of bollocks; it’s convenience. All things, from evolution to municipal sanitation to marriage to the Big Bang to diplomacy to the distribution of shops in urban centers, trend toward the most convenient outcome for the greatest number of lazy bastards, because the inconvenient stuff ends up alone without any friends and a foot growing out of their head and who has the time?”
Space Opera (p.179)
Justice takes so long that by the time you get it, it’s gone off and smells like an old corpse. Forget about justice. Just knock back a big, stiff drink and move to a new town with fewer pronks living in it.
Space Opera (p.17)
… everybody was terribly distracted by the seemingly unending, white-hot, existential, logistical, mostly mundane troubles of their own day-to-day lives.
Space Opera (p.227)
“As far as quality housemates to be found on Planet Earth, it goes: dolphins, elephants, orangutans, octopi, then every single spider, then Joan of Arc, the Dalai Lama, Mr. Rogers, Freddie Mercury, my nan, all the scorpions, German measles, a dented recycling bin, and then maybe some of the rest of us. It’s grim.”
Space Opera (p.21)
“When the aliens come, there’ll be one queue to fight them and one queue to fuck them, and the second one’ll be longer by light years.”
Space Opera (p.31)
It blossomed all over again into cosmic grief at the ultimate impossibility of communication between two living beings.
Space Opera (p.40)
I’ll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life.
Topic: comparison
Space Opera (p.128)
No one is ever really satisfied with what they’ve got, look at that skinny bastard Old Ruutu, he heated up his whole planet like a leftover takeaway, and he still wasn’t really that happy, if you ask me. People are mostly happiest when they think they’re just about to get the thing they most want. Before and after, they’re all monsters.
Topic: compassion
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.125)
“Because you’re a friend,” she said, the edge leaving her voice. “And because making connections is what I do. And if you’re serious about this, I’d rather you go through me than some back-alley hack. Though, truth be told, I’m also hoping that by the time I find someone, you’ll have decided I was right about it being a bad idea.”
Topic: confidence
All Systems Red (p.102)
It’s wrong to think of a construct as a half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.
All Systems Red (p.149)
I don’t know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn’t that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.53)
Ashby scratched his beard and thought. What did he want it for? After he’d first left home, all those years ago, he’d sometimes wondered if he’d go back to the Fleet to raise kids, or if he’d settle down on a colony somewhere. But he was a spacer through and through, and he had the itch for drifting.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.137)
She wished someone would give her that sort of attention on a whim. She wished she were confident enough to give it back.
Space Opera (p.64)
He’d only said what he meant, which was, when you thought about it, a minor superpower, because so few people ever did.
Space Opera (p.87)
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the fragile illusion of invulnerability inherent in being just like everyone else. No–it’s Englishblokeman.
Topic: conflict
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.61)
The Friends of Digital Sapients were one of those organizations that had their hearts in the right place but their heads firmly up their asses. On paper, Jenks believed a lot of the same things they did, namely that AIs were sapient individuals worthy of the same leagl rights that everyone else had. But the FDS went about it all wrong.
Topic: connection
Space Opera (p.55)
Nobody understood what the Absolute Zeros believed so hard, they couldn’t even wedge it into their lyrics yet: The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.
Topic: consistency
All Systems Red (p.43)
If the humans see me actually doing my job, it helps keep suspicions from forming about faulty governor modules.
Topic: constraints
Space Opera (p.113)
You have already heard the First General Fact: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. It goes on to add: You can only ever fix one of these at a time, and wouldn’t it be nice if anyone could agree on which one is the bigger problem?
Topic: contracts
All Systems Red (pp.107-108)
Because you need me. I don’t know where that came from. All right, it came from me, but she was my client, I was a SecUnit. There was no emotional contract between us. There was no rational reason for me to sound like a whiny human baby.
Topic: control
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.185)
“I sure did,” Dr. Chef said. He handed Rosemary a clean cloth. “Once I’d medicated Ashby and got his bots going, I locked myself in my office and yelled for a good ten minutes.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.190)
“And I don’t want to leave. But I won’t be on the Wayfarer forever anyway. Someday, when the time’s right, I’ll go do other things. If that time gets chosen for me, well… okay.”
Topic: courage
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.13)
But with the last of her savings running thin and her bridges burned behind her, ther was no margin for error. The price of a fresh start was having no one to fall back on.
Topic: craft
All Systems Red (p.93)
MedSystem’s feed informed me that Ratthi, Overse, and Arada’s heart rates had just accelerated. Mensah’s hadn’t, because she had already thought of all this. It was why she had sent Pin-Lee and Gurathin to shut off HubSystem. Nervously, Ratthi said, “What do we do when they come here?” I said, “Be somewhere else.”
All Systems Red (p.103)
I didn’t want to do it. Now more than ever. They knew too much about me. But I needed them to trust me so I could keep them alive and keep doing my job. The good version of my job, not the half-assed version of my job that I’d been doing before things started trying to kill my clients. I still didn’t want to do it.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.39)
Dr. Chef shook his head, the skin on his cheeks shivering. “I don’t like implants that aren’t medically necessary. Besides, what’s the point of talking to different species if you don’t take the time to learn their words? Seems like cheating to simply think things and let the little box do the talking for you.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.123)
“Your version of used is usually better than new,” Jenks said. He meant it. Pepper was a wizard when it came to bringing tech back from the dead.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.125)
“Because you’re a friend,” she said, the edge leaving her voice. “And because making connections is what I do. And if you’re serious about this, I’d rather you go through me than some back-alley hack. Though, truth be told, I’m also hoping that by the time I find someone, you’ll have decided I was right about it being a bad idea.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.10)
Ashby’s hackles were up, but truthfully, this was an ideal way for a conversation with Corbin to go. Get him away from the crew, let him vent, wait for him to cross a line, then talk him down while he was feeling penitent.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.148)
They drifted through the swirling silt, and to the ordinary observer, they would appear to be doing nothing but drawing dust trails with their comblike arms. But if Ohan looked with their mind, mapped it all out with the right numbers and notions, the space outside became a majestic, violent place.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.149)
The swirls of fur and clicks of tongue meant nothing to their crewmates, but they meant everything to Ohan.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (pp.163-164)
At first, Rosemary had assumed that it was some sort of tech lingo, but no, Jenks had quietly confirmed that this was Kizzy’s own special way of staying organized. Rosemary squinted at the screen. 5500 credits (ish)–WRSS. She made a flicking motion with her left hand, pulling up a file entitled ‘Kizzyspeak,’ her cheat sheet for acronyms that she had deciphered. ES (Engine Stuff). TB (Tools and Bits). CRCT (Circuits). But no, WRSS wasn’t there. She made a note to ask Kizzy about it.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.23)
“No, but see, that’s why it’s so fun! It’s like a puzzle, figuring out what kind of circuits the old ones will talk to, adding new bits to make things more homey, staying on top of all the old framework’s secrets so we don’t blow up.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.207)
All misgivings that Ashby had about buying modder equipment vanished as Nib spoke to them about his tech. Nib already had the Wayfarer’s specs on hand, but he wanted to know more than just engine readouts and hull dimensions. He wanted details.
Space Opera (p.233)
He hated this place. What was the point of a world without debilitating bitterness and despair? How could you even tell you were alive? How could you possibly write a decent pop song if you weren’t a sad sack of tissues or at least fundamentally angry at the world most of the time?
Topic: creativity
Space Opera (p.233)
He hated this place. What was the point of a world without debilitating bitterness and despair? How could you even tell you were alive? How could you possibly write a decent pop song if you weren’t a sad sack of tissues or at least fundamentally angry at the world most of the time?
Topic: culture
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.115)
Kizzy nodded, stuffing a handful of puffs into her mouth. “Srvsts mmdn mmf–hrm.” She swallowed. “Survivalists abandon babies if they’re sick or different or whatever. Just like, oh, hey, this one’s kind of weird, better leave it behind so we can weed out the weak genes.” Kizzy clenched her fists, crushing the puffs within the bag. “Gah! It’s so stupid!” She looked down at the bag as if seeing it for the first time. “Aww.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.117)
“Mala wouldn’t let them do it. Jenks says once she got the doctors to admit that him being small didn’t mean he wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t even a question for her. Didn’t have anything to do with the Gaiist stuff at that point. He says she was just sick of people telling her that there was something wrong with her kid.” She stopped and looked around. “And I’ve totally been walking the wrong way.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.145)
“I know. But you’re a good woman. The things you have to do don’t change that. And your species– you know how to end a war. Truly end it. It doesn’t get in your blood. You do what needs doing and leave it at that.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.203)
Ashby started to wonder why the settlers had bothered rebuilding at all, but he already knew the answer. To some Humans, the promise of a patch of land was worth any effort. It was an oddly predictable sort of behavior. Humans had a long, storied history of forcing their way into places where they didn’t belong.
Topic: death
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.152)
Ohan preferred to take in the sight alone, especially now. A black hole was the perfect place to contemplate death. There was nothing in the universe that could last forever. Not stars. Not matter. Nothing.
Space Opera (p.144)
Because the opposite of fascism isn’t anarchy, it’s theater. When the world is fucked, you go to the theater, you go to the shine, and when the bad men come, all there is left to do is sing them down. You didn’t get it, I didn’t think you understood, you can’t sing a dirge to the reaper, he’s already heard them all. You gotta slaughter him with joy and a beat like the best of all possible shags,…
Space Opera (p.147)
“Dying happens to everyone, even stars. Even the stuff between stars. But if you believe in yourself and achieve your goals, you can die so hard that no one will ever forget you, and that’s almost as good as not dying at all.”
Space Opera (p.25)
…their favorite children and their ailing parents singing a duet about how much and how desperately they needed them.
Topic: development
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.58)
The Lovey that Jenks knew was uniquely molded by the Wayfarer. Her personality had been shaped by every experience she and the crew had together, every place they’d been, every conversation they’d shared. And honestly, Jenks thought, couldn’t the same be said for organic people? Weren’t they all born running the Basic Human Starter Platform, which was shaped and changed as they went along? In Jenks’s eyes, the only real difference in cognitive development between Humans and AIs was that of speed.
Topic: difference
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.139)
Her body was strange, her ways were strange, and yet, Rosemary found herself in deep admiration.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.153)
When meeting an individual of another species for the first time, there is no sapient in the galaxy who does not immediately take inventory of xyr physiological differences. There are always the first things we see. How does xyr skin differ? Does xe have a tail? How does xe move? How does xe pick things up? What does xe eat? Does xe have abilities that I don’t? Or vice versa?
Topic: doubt
All Systems Red (p.147)
I didn’t know what I would do on a farm. Clean the house? That sounded way more boring than security. Maybe it would work out. This was what I was supposed to want. This was what everything had always told me I was supposed to want.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.171)
I miss your hands. I miss sharing a bed. I miss sharing stories. I’ll never understand how you can be so patient with someone who can’t talk to you for tendays at a time. I’m not sure one of my own would’ve stayed with me through this. You Humans and your blind stubborness. Believe me, it’s–
Space Opera (pp.254-255)
“I wish I were someone else. Someone you could rely on to turn it out no matter what. I’m afraid that whatever I had is lost by now. I haven’t had a song out in years. I haven’t had a good day in years. What if I get up there and just completely blow it? Or worse, what if I get up there and give the performance of my sorry life, the best show in the history of me, if the light of the world comes beaming out of me like a bloody Care Bear Stare for the ages, and it’s not good enough? If you lot somehow hear in my voice all the worst of us?”
Topic: education
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.25)
“The very fact that we use the term cold-blooded
as a synonym for heartless
should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles,’ she pictured him saying. ‘Don’t judge other species by your own social norms.’ “
Topic: effort
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.146)
“You’re trying to evolve. I think the rest of the galaxy underestimates what that says about you.”
Topic: ego
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.156)
I believe this is why many of my peers still cling to theories of genetic material scattered by asteroids and supernovae. In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.
Topic: embarrassment
All Systems Red (p.22)
“All right,” she said, and looked at me for what objectively I knew was 2.4 seconds and subjectively about twenty excruciating minutes.
Topic: empathy
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.93)
“I did the same thing when my daughters were off at war. That’s why I don’t like that he’s doing it. I know how all that wondering can eat away at a person.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.151)
They believed Dr. Chef understood this social limitation. In a way, Dr. Chef could see into the hearts of others as well as Ohan themself could see the universe. Ohan often wondered if Dr. Chef knew what a gift that was.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.159)
“I think that’s normal for anyone living with people other than their own. I’m sure they get tired of us, too.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.171)
I miss your hands. I miss sharing a bed. I miss sharing stories. I’ll never understand how you can be so patient with someone who can’t talk to you for tendays at a time. I’m not sure one of my own would’ve stayed with me through this. You Humans and your blind stubborness. Believe me, it’s–
Space Opera (p.5)
Which of us are people and which of us are meat?
Space Opera (p.95)
Life is beautiful and life is stupid.
Space Opera (pp.105-107)
The question has never even been: Do you understand object permanence, can you recognize yourself in the mirror, do you bury your dead, do you bond emotionally with your young?…
Elephants do all those things, and some humans definitely don’t. The only question is this: Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other than that it rocks?…Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play? Do you have a soul?
Space Opera (p.113)
You have already heard the First General Fact: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. It goes on to add: You can only ever fix one of these at a time, and wouldn’t it be nice if anyone could agree on which one is the bigger problem?
Topic: employment
All Systems Red (p.61)
I did that because it seemed sensible, not because I knew what I was doing. I am not a combat murderbot, I’m Security. I keep things from attacking the clients and try to gently discourage the clients from attacking each other. I was way out of my depth here, which was another reason I hadn’t wanted the humans to come here.
Topic: excellence
All Systems Red (p.67)
It was nice having a human smart enough to work with like this.
Topic: expectation
All Systems Red (p.48)
It took me two seconds to realize she was talking to me. Fortunately, since it seemed like we were really doing this, I had actually been paying attention and didn’t need to play the conversation back.
All Systems Red (p.61)
I did that because it seemed sensible, not because I knew what I was doing. I am not a combat murderbot, I’m Security. I keep things from attacking the clients and try to gently discourage the clients from attacking each other. I was way out of my depth here, which was another reason I hadn’t wanted the humans to come here.
All Systems Red (p.26)
Basically freehold generally meant shitshow so I hadn’t been expecting much from them. But they were surprisingly easy to work for.
All Systems Red (p.27)
Part of it is, they didn’t want me here. Not here in their hub, but here on the planet.
Topic: family
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.117)
“Mala wouldn’t let them do it. Jenks says once she got the doctors to admit that him being small didn’t mean he wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t even a question for her. Didn’t have anything to do with the Gaiist stuff at that point. He says she was just sick of people telling her that there was something wrong with her kid.” She stopped and looked around. “And I’ve totally been walking the wrong way.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.160)
“And it’s not like they’ve done anything wrong. You know how much this crew means to me. But today… I don’t know. It feels like having a mess of younger hatchmates who won’t stop playing with your toys. They’re not breaking anything and you know they’re only trying to please you, but they’re so little and annoying, and you want them all to fall down a well. Temporarily.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.167)
“Just because you leave home doesn’t mean you stop caring about it. You wouldn’t get homesick otherwise. And your family knows you care. I keep an eye on our Linking traffic, you know. I see how many vid packs get sent to your family.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.182)
No one else was hurt. The ambi, the food, none of that mattered. They were things, and things could be replaced. His crew couldn’t be. The relief he’d felt upon learning he was the only one who’d wound up in the med bay topped anything that the painkillers could give.
Space Opera (p.25)
…their favorite children and their ailing parents singing a duet about how much and how desperately they needed them.
Topic: fear
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (pp.150-151)
Even so, Ohan was afraid. They could disconnect themself from the fear, but it lingered, like an unpleasant taste in the back of the throat. Fear. Such a throwback emotion, meant to spur primitive life-forms away from potential predators. Life’s universal constant. Every fear of rejection, of criticism, or failure, of loss– these were all caused by that same archaic survival reflex.
Topic: feelings
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.135)
“Yeah, stuff that’s really important or hard to say. Like about love or hate or stuff you’re scared about. You know how when you have something big to tell someone, you stammer through it or sit in front of your mirror practicing what to say? Aandrisks don’t bother with that. They let the gestures take care of all the awkwards. They figure that big, deep feelings are universal enough to be defined with just a flick of the hand or whatever, even though the events that cause those feelings are unique.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.185)
“I sure did,” Dr. Chef said. He handed Rosemary a clean cloth. “Once I’d medicated Ashby and got his bots going, I locked myself in my office and yelled for a good ten minutes.”
Topic: food
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.89)
“I have never understood potatoes,” Sissix said. “The whole point of a potato is to cover it with salt so you don’t notice how bland it is. Why not just get a salt lick and skip the potato?”
Space Opera (p.5)
Which of us are people and which of us are meat?
Topic: friendship
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.139)
“Being weird doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve companionship.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.28)
“Rosemary, on behalf of the crew of the Wayfarer, I would like to apologize,” Sissix said. “Coming into a new home deserves a better welcome than anything Artis Corbin can give. I’m sure you know all about the escape pods by now, and nothing about who we are and what we do.”
Topic: frustration
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.115)
Kizzy nodded, stuffing a handful of puffs into her mouth. “Srvsts mmdn mmf–hrm.” She swallowed. “Survivalists abandon babies if they’re sick or different or whatever. Just like, oh, hey, this one’s kind of weird, better leave it behind so we can weed out the weak genes.” Kizzy clenched her fists, crushing the puffs within the bag. “Gah! It’s so stupid!” She looked down at the bag as if seeing it for the first time. “Aww.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.160)
“And it’s not like they’ve done anything wrong. You know how much this crew means to me. But today… I don’t know. It feels like having a mess of younger hatchmates who won’t stop playing with your toys. They’re not breaking anything and you know they’re only trying to please you, but they’re so little and annoying, and you want them all to fall down a well. Temporarily.”
Topic: fun
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.79)
Dr. Chef exhaled a disparaging rumble and fixed his beady eyes on Rosemary. “Some advice? If Kizzy ever says the words ‘you know what would be a great idea?,’ ignore whatever comes after.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.89)
“I have never understood potatoes,” Sissix said. “The whole point of a potato is to cover it with salt so you don’t notice how bland it is. Why not just get a salt lick and skip the potato?”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.90)
A past birthday gift from Kizzy, who always ignored the fact that none of the non-Human crew members traditionally celebrated birthdays.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.23)
“No, but see, that’s why it’s so fun! It’s like a puzzle, figuring out what kind of circuits the old ones will talk to, adding new bits to make things more homey, staying on top of all the old framework’s secrets so we don’t blow up.”
Topic: history
Space Opera (p.84)
…Binned–a word which had come, over the millenia, to mean: carefully, lovingly recorded for posterity by the Elakhon and preserved against the ravages of time, war, and the children’s disrespect for history.
Topic: home
Space Opera (p.227)
“As far as quality housemates to be found on Planet Earth, it goes: dolphins, elephants, orangutans, octopi, then every single spider, then Joan of Arc, the Dalai Lama, Mr. Rogers, Freddie Mercury, my nan, all the scorpions, German measles, a dented recycling bin, and then maybe some of the rest of us. It’s grim.”
Topic: humility
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.91)
“Grum games are rather similar, thematically. I think our species are rather alike, in some ways. Humans would’ve died out, to, if the Aeluons chanced upon the Fleet. Luck’s what saved them. Luck, and discovering humility. That’s really all that makes Humans different from Grum. Well, aside from the obvious.” He chuckled, gesturing to his body.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.156)
I believe this is why many of my peers still cling to theories of genetic material scattered by asteroids and supernovae. In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.
Topic: identity
All Systems Red (p.102)
It’s wrong to think of a construct as a half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.
All Systems Red (p.20)
I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous. Also, if I’m not in the armor then it’s because I’m wounded and one of my organic parts may fall off and plop on the floor at any moment and no one wants to see that.
All Systems Red (pp.145-146)
“If people won’t be shooting at me what will I be doing?” Maybe I could be her bodyguard.
All Systems Red (p.147)
I didn’t know what I would do on a farm. Clean the house? That sounded way more boring than security. Maybe it would work out. This was what I was supposed to want. This was what everything had always told me I was supposed to want.
All Systems Red (p.149)
I don’t know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn’t that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.53)
Ashby scratched his beard and thought. What did he want it for? After he’d first left home, all those years ago, he’d sometimes wondered if he’d go back to the Fleet to raise kids, or if he’d settle down on a colony somewhere. But he was a spacer through and through, and he had the itch for drifting.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.190)
“And I don’t want to leave. But I won’t be on the Wayfarer forever anyway. Someday, when the time’s right, I’ll go do other things. If that time gets chosen for me, well… okay.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.206)
“It’s our hobby,” Bear said. “We only sell them to neighbors and trusted friends. We’re not in the business of equipping bad guys. But if you want to discourage bad guys, oh yeah, we can do that.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.25)
“The very fact that we use the term cold-blooded
as a synonym for heartless
should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles,’ she pictured him saying. ‘Don’t judge other species by your own social norms.’ “
Space Opera (p.87)
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the fragile illusion of invulnerability inherent in being just like everyone else. No–it’s Englishblokeman.
Space Opera (p.203)
“Damn…I thought you were the other one. I hate carbons. You all look the same.”
Space Opera (p.17)
… everybody was terribly distracted by the seemingly unending, white-hot, existential, logistical, mostly mundane troubles of their own day-to-day lives.
Space Opera (p.39)
You’re just shy of figuring out how to shuffle your horde of hormone-curdled control-obsessed malignant narcissists offworld.
Topic: influence
All Systems Red (p.147)
Supposed to want.
Topic: inspiration
Space Opera (p.233)
He hated this place. What was the point of a world without debilitating bitterness and despair? How could you even tell you were alive? How could you possibly write a decent pop song if you weren’t a sad sack of tissues or at least fundamentally angry at the world most of the time?
Topic: integrity
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.39)
Dr. Chef shook his head, the skin on his cheeks shivering. “I don’t like implants that aren’t medically necessary. Besides, what’s the point of talking to different species if you don’t take the time to learn their words? Seems like cheating to simply think things and let the little box do the talking for you.”
Topic: journeys
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.167)
“Just because you leave home doesn’t mean you stop caring about it. You wouldn’t get homesick otherwise. And your family knows you care. I keep an eye on our Linking traffic, you know. I see how many vid packs get sent to your family.”
Space Opera (p.78)
“I’m…I’m the coyote. I make the most magnificent contraptions, and I always think this time, this time everyone will see how good I really am, but they only ever burn me up and leave me starving to death.”
Space Opera (p.95)
Life is beautiful and life is stupid.
Space Opera (p.16)
Neither Decibel nor Oort nor poor dead Mira ever imagined the power of the ordinary to gum up the works of the epic.
Space Opera (p.194)
So they could feel a little more human by osmosis…Pain becomes playful, playful becomes pretty, pretty becomes pleasure, pleasure becomes profit, profit becomes safety, another day not working at Mr. Five Star, another day further from invisibility.
Topic: justice
Space Opera (p.179)
Justice takes so long that by the time you get it, it’s gone off and smells like an old corpse. Forget about justice. Just knock back a big, stiff drink and move to a new town with fewer pronks living in it.
Topic: leadership
All Systems Red (p.93)
MedSystem’s feed informed me that Ratthi, Overse, and Arada’s heart rates had just accelerated. Mensah’s hadn’t, because she had already thought of all this. It was why she had sent Pin-Lee and Gurathin to shut off HubSystem. Nervously, Ratthi said, “What do we do when they come here?” I said, “Be somewhere else.”
All Systems Red (p.48)
Mensah’s expression said she was worried. She looked at me. “What do you think?”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.4)
Ashby sighed, swallowed his irritation and became the captain. He kept his face neutral, his ears open. Talking to Corbin always required a moment of preparation, and a good deal of detachment.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.7)
Ashby had no idea what Corbin was getting at, but this was Corbin’s standard operating procedure. Complain first, explain later.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.10)
Ashby’s hackles were up, but truthfully, this was an ideal way for a conversation with Corbin to go. Get him away from the crew, let him vent, wait for him to cross a line, then talk him down while he was feeling penitent.
Space Opera (p.197)
“We have always believed that one of the hallmarks of sentience is the ability to look down upon others.”
Topic: learning
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.58)
The Lovey that Jenks knew was uniquely molded by the Wayfarer. Her personality had been shaped by every experience she and the crew had together, every place they’d been, every conversation they’d shared. And honestly, Jenks thought, couldn’t the same be said for organic people? Weren’t they all born running the Basic Human Starter Platform, which was shaped and changed as they went along? In Jenks’s eyes, the only real difference in cognitive development between Humans and AIs was that of speed.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.73)
Rosemary frowned. She had a rough idea of how tunnels worked, but she’d never been able to make the idea stick.
Space Opera (p.113)
You have already heard the First General Fact: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. It goes on to add: You can only ever fix one of these at a time, and wouldn’t it be nice if anyone could agree on which one is the bigger problem?
Topic: loneliness
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.4)
But the constant sounds of people working and laughing and fighting all around him had become a comfort. The open was an empty place to be, and there were moments when even the most seasoned spacer might look to the star-flecked void outside with humility and awe.
Space Opera (p.78)
“I’m…I’m the coyote. I make the most magnificent contraptions, and I always think this time, this time everyone will see how good I really am, but they only ever burn me up and leave me starving to death.”
Space Opera (p.112)
Only the uncool have the requisite alone time to advance their species.
Space Opera (p.281)
I promise never to skip school again, just come back. It’s lonely being the last of us. I wish I could fix it all. I wish I could have been better. That’s all. I just wish I was better.
Topic: longing
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.187)
This paper has far too little space for me to write everything I want to say, so know this: I love you, and I think of you always.
Topic: love
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.171)
I miss your hands. I miss sharing a bed. I miss sharing stories. I’ll never understand how you can be so patient with someone who can’t talk to you for tendays at a time. I’m not sure one of my own would’ve stayed with me through this. You Humans and your blind stubborness. Believe me, it’s–
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.187)
This paper has far too little space for me to write everything I want to say, so know this: I love you, and I think of you always.
Space Opera (p.263)
Marry me, and we’ll make a little bubble universe where nothing has to change and the elections never happened and it’s just Arkable Us, neon against the night, ice cream against the world.
Space Opera (p.281)
I promise never to skip school again, just come back. It’s lonely being the last of us. I wish I could fix it all. I wish I could have been better. That’s all. I just wish I was better.
Topic: luck
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.91)
“Grum games are rather similar, thematically. I think our species are rather alike, in some ways. Humans would’ve died out, to, if the Aeluons chanced upon the Fleet. Luck’s what saved them. Luck, and discovering humility. That’s really all that makes Humans different from Grum. Well, aside from the obvious.” He chuckled, gesturing to his body.
Topic: magic
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.148)
They drifted through the swirling silt, and to the ordinary observer, they would appear to be doing nothing but drawing dust trails with their comblike arms. But if Ohan looked with their mind, mapped it all out with the right numbers and notions, the space outside became a majestic, violent place.
Space Opera (pp.105-107)
The question has never even been: Do you understand object permanence, can you recognize yourself in the mirror, do you bury your dead, do you bond emotionally with your young?…
Elephants do all those things, and some humans definitely don’t. The only question is this: Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other than that it rocks?…Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play? Do you have a soul?
Space Opera (p.112)
Only the uncool have the requisite alone time to advance their species.
Space Opera (pp.254-255)
“I wish I were someone else. Someone you could rely on to turn it out no matter what. I’m afraid that whatever I had is lost by now. I haven’t had a song out in years. I haven’t had a good day in years. What if I get up there and just completely blow it? Or worse, what if I get up there and give the performance of my sorry life, the best show in the history of me, if the light of the world comes beaming out of me like a bloody Care Bear Stare for the ages, and it’s not good enough? If you lot somehow hear in my voice all the worst of us?”
Topic: mistakes
Space Opera (p.263)
Marry me, and we’ll make a little bubble universe where nothing has to change and the elections never happened and it’s just Arkable Us, neon against the night, ice cream against the world.
Topic: morality
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.145)
Pei’s cheeks went a somber orange. “It is. I’m only on the edges of it, and from what I’ve seen… trust me, Ashby, this is a war that needs to be fought.” She exhaled in thought. “Do you think badly of me for– I don’t know, for accepting business from soldiers?”
Topic: music
Space Opera (p.55)
Nobody understood what the Absolute Zeros believed so hard, they couldn’t even wedge it into their lyrics yet: The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.
Space Opera (p.144)
Because the opposite of fascism isn’t anarchy, it’s theater. When the world is fucked, you go to the theater, you go to the shine, and when the bad men come, all there is left to do is sing them down. You didn’t get it, I didn’t think you understood, you can’t sing a dirge to the reaper, he’s already heard them all. You gotta slaughter him with joy and a beat like the best of all possible shags,…
Topic: partnership
All Systems Red (p.67)
It was nice having a human smart enough to work with like this.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.125)
“Because you’re a friend,” she said, the edge leaving her voice. “And because making connections is what I do. And if you’re serious about this, I’d rather you go through me than some back-alley hack. Though, truth be told, I’m also hoping that by the time I find someone, you’ll have decided I was right about it being a bad idea.”
Topic: passion
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.23)
“No, but see, that’s why it’s so fun! It’s like a puzzle, figuring out what kind of circuits the old ones will talk to, adding new bits to make things more homey, staying on top of all the old framework’s secrets so we don’t blow up.”
Space Opera (p.21)
“When the aliens come, there’ll be one queue to fight them and one queue to fuck them, and the second one’ll be longer by light years.”
Topic: patience
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.7)
Ashby had no idea what Corbin was getting at, but this was Corbin’s standard operating procedure. Complain first, explain later.
Topic: patterns
All Systems Red (p.61)
I did that because it seemed sensible, not because I knew what I was doing. I am not a combat murderbot, I’m Security. I keep things from attacking the clients and try to gently discourage the clients from attacking each other. I was way out of my depth here, which was another reason I hadn’t wanted the humans to come here.
Topic: perspective
All Systems Red (p.22)
“All right,” she said, and looked at me for what objectively I knew was 2.4 seconds and subjectively about twenty excruciating minutes.
All Systems Red (p.43)
If the humans see me actually doing my job, it helps keep suspicions from forming about faulty governor modules.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.136)
As Rosemary watched, the peculiarity of the act began to melt away.
Topic: politics
Space Opera (p.79)
“For lo, does not Goguenar’s Third Unkillable Fact tell us: ‘Though any species on any dumb gobworld may develop sentience (the poor bastards), no government ever does?’ "
Space Opera (p.36)
I can’t wait for your monarchs to decide to hide it, lose control of the narrative, deny the evidence, call me a weather balloon, confess and resign, and finally leak a half-redacted version of what I tried to say to a newspaper friendly to one faction or another.
Topic: power
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.141)
But Aeluons, by some weird fluke of evolution, had a look that made most Humans drop their jaws, hold up their palms and say, “Okay, you are a superior species.”
Space Opera (p.36)
I can’t wait for your monarchs to decide to hide it, lose control of the narrative, deny the evidence, call me a weather balloon, confess and resign, and finally leak a half-redacted version of what I tried to say to a newspaper friendly to one faction or another.
Topic: preparation
All Systems Red (p.93)
MedSystem’s feed informed me that Ratthi, Overse, and Arada’s heart rates had just accelerated. Mensah’s hadn’t, because she had already thought of all this. It was why she had sent Pin-Lee and Gurathin to shut off HubSystem. Nervously, Ratthi said, “What do we do when they come here?” I said, “Be somewhere else.”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.207)
“We have different philosophies, you and I, but I can understand where you’re coming from. Violence is always disconcerting, even if it’s only potential violence. But after the trouble you recently found yourself in– not to mention the place you’re headed to– it sounds as if you could do with some basic tools of self-defense. If that only constitutes shielding for you, that’s okay. But you need something.”
Topic: prioritization
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.182)
No one else was hurt. The ambi, the food, none of that mattered. They were things, and things could be replaced. His crew couldn’t be. The relief he’d felt upon learning he was the only one who’d wound up in the med bay topped anything that the painkillers could give.
Topic: progress
Space Opera (p.194)
So they could feel a little more human by osmosis…Pain becomes playful, playful becomes pretty, pretty becomes pleasure, pleasure becomes profit, profit becomes safety, another day not working at Mr. Five Star, another day further from invisibility.
Topic: purpose
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.206)
“It’s our hobby,” Bear said. “We only sell them to neighbors and trusted friends. We’re not in the business of equipping bad guys. But if you want to discourage bad guys, oh yeah, we can do that.”
Space Opera (pp.105-107)
The question has never even been: Do you understand object permanence, can you recognize yourself in the mirror, do you bury your dead, do you bond emotionally with your young?…
Elephants do all those things, and some humans definitely don’t. The only question is this: Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other than that it rocks?…Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play? Do you have a soul?
Space Opera (p.144)
Because the opposite of fascism isn’t anarchy, it’s theater. When the world is fucked, you go to the theater, you go to the shine, and when the bad men come, all there is left to do is sing them down. You didn’t get it, I didn’t think you understood, you can’t sing a dirge to the reaper, he’s already heard them all. You gotta slaughter him with joy and a beat like the best of all possible shags,…
Space Opera (p.194)
So they could feel a little more human by osmosis…Pain becomes playful, playful becomes pretty, pretty becomes pleasure, pleasure becomes profit, profit becomes safety, another day not working at Mr. Five Star, another day further from invisibility.
Topic: race
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.129)
When she considered the historical context, Rosemary thought their presence in the shop made for a rather odd tableau: a Harmagian (an aging son of a former empire), an Aandrisk (whose people had moderated the talks that granted independence to Harmagian colonies and ultimately founded the GC) and two Humans (a meager species that would’ve been ripe for the picking if they had been discovered during the days of Harmagian conquest). All standing together, amicably discussing the sale of soap. Time was a curious equalizer.
Space Opera (p.203)
“Damn…I thought you were the other one. I hate carbons. You all look the same.”
Topic: reciprocation
All Systems Red (pp.126-127)
That got their attention. There was no reply. Not a surprise. The only people I’ve run into who actually want to get into conversations with SecUnits are my weird humans. I said, “I have an alternate solution to both our problems.”
Topic: regret
Space Opera (p.281)
I promise never to skip school again, just come back. It’s lonely being the last of us. I wish I could fix it all. I wish I could have been better. That’s all. I just wish I was better.
Topic: relief
All Systems Red (p.26)
Basically freehold generally meant shitshow so I hadn’t been expecting much from them. But they were surprisingly easy to work for.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.182)
No one else was hurt. The ambi, the food, none of that mattered. They were things, and things could be replaced. His crew couldn’t be. The relief he’d felt upon learning he was the only one who’d wound up in the med bay topped anything that the painkillers could give.
Topic: representation
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.61)
The Friends of Digital Sapients were one of those organizations that had their hearts in the right place but their heads firmly up their asses. On paper, Jenks believed a lot of the same things they did, namely that AIs were sapient individuals worthy of the same leagl rights that everyone else had. But the FDS went about it all wrong.
Topic: resistance
Space Opera (p.118)
“Everyone’s always saying love is the element that binds the universe together, but that’s a load of bollocks; it’s convenience. All things, from evolution to municipal sanitation to marriage to the Big Bang to diplomacy to the distribution of shops in urban centers, trend toward the most convenient outcome for the greatest number of lazy bastards, because the inconvenient stuff ends up alone without any friends and a foot growing out of their head and who has the time?”
Topic: resources
Space Opera (p.40)
I’ll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life.
Topic: respect
All Systems Red (p.48)
It took me two seconds to realize she was talking to me. Fortunately, since it seemed like we were really doing this, I had actually been paying attention and didn’t need to play the conversation back.
All Systems Red (p.110)
Mensah set up a watch schedule, including in time for me to go into standby and do a diagnostic and recharge cycle. I was planning to use the time to watch some Sanctuary Moon and recharge my ability to cope with humans at close quarters without losing my mind.
All Systems Red (p.33)
I had worked for some contracts that would have kept me standing here the entire day and night cycle, just on the off chance they wanted me to do something and didn’t want to bother using the feed to call me. Then she added, “You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?”
All Systems Red (p.48)
Mensah’s expression said she was worried. She looked at me. “What do you think?”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.145)
Pei’s cheeks went a somber orange. “It is. I’m only on the edges of it, and from what I’ve seen… trust me, Ashby, this is a war that needs to be fought.” She exhaled in thought. “Do you think badly of me for– I don’t know, for accepting business from soldiers?”
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.25)
“The very fact that we use the term cold-blooded
as a synonym for heartless
should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles,’ she pictured him saying. ‘Don’t judge other species by your own social norms.’ “
Topic: rest
All Systems Red (p.110)
Mensah set up a watch schedule, including in time for me to go into standby and do a diagnostic and recharge cycle. I was planning to use the time to watch some Sanctuary Moon and recharge my ability to cope with humans at close quarters without losing my mind.
Topic: sacrifice
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.167)
“Just because you leave home doesn’t mean you stop caring about it. You wouldn’t get homesick otherwise. And your family knows you care. I keep an eye on our Linking traffic, you know. I see how many vid packs get sent to your family.”
Topic: satisfaction
Space Opera (p.128)
No one is ever really satisfied with what they’ve got, look at that skinny bastard Old Ruutu, he heated up his whole planet like a leftover takeaway, and he still wasn’t really that happy, if you ask me. People are mostly happiest when they think they’re just about to get the thing they most want. Before and after, they’re all monsters.
Space Opera (p.140)
The key to a happy life, Capo devoutly believed, was never giving much of a damn what happened in any given day so long as you got in a nap, a kill, and a snuggle, and the snuggle was optional.
Topic: science
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.148)
They drifted through the swirling silt, and to the ordinary observer, they would appear to be doing nothing but drawing dust trails with their comblike arms. But if Ohan looked with their mind, mapped it all out with the right numbers and notions, the space outside became a majestic, violent place.
Topic: selling
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.207)
All misgivings that Ashby had about buying modder equipment vanished as Nib spoke to them about his tech. Nib already had the Wayfarer’s specs on hand, but he wanted to know more than just engine readouts and hull dimensions. He wanted details.
Topic: sexuality
Space Opera (p.21)
“When the aliens come, there’ll be one queue to fight them and one queue to fuck them, and the second one’ll be longer by light years.”
Topic: solitude
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.53)
Ashby scratched his beard and thought. What did he want it for? After he’d first left home, all those years ago, he’d sometimes wondered if he’d go back to the Fleet to raise kids, or if he’d settle down on a colony somewhere. But he was a spacer through and through, and he had the itch for drifting.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.152)
Ohan preferred to take in the sight alone, especially now. A black hole was the perfect place to contemplate death. There was nothing in the universe that could last forever. Not stars. Not matter. Nothing.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.13)
But with the last of her savings running thin and her bridges burned behind her, ther was no margin for error. The price of a fresh start was having no one to fall back on.
Topic: teamwork
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (pp.163-164)
At first, Rosemary had assumed that it was some sort of tech lingo, but no, Jenks had quietly confirmed that this was Kizzy’s own special way of staying organized. Rosemary squinted at the screen. 5500 credits (ish)–WRSS. She made a flicking motion with her left hand, pulling up a file entitled ‘Kizzyspeak,’ her cheat sheet for acronyms that she had deciphered. ES (Engine Stuff). TB (Tools and Bits). CRCT (Circuits). But no, WRSS wasn’t there. She made a note to ask Kizzy about it.
Topic: time
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.129)
When she considered the historical context, Rosemary thought their presence in the shop made for a rather odd tableau: a Harmagian (an aging son of a former empire), an Aandrisk (whose people had moderated the talks that granted independence to Harmagian colonies and ultimately founded the GC) and two Humans (a meager species that would’ve been ripe for the picking if they had been discovered during the days of Harmagian conquest). All standing together, amicably discussing the sale of soap. Time was a curious equalizer.
Topic: trust
All Systems Red (pp.107-108)
Because you need me. I don’t know where that came from. All right, it came from me, but she was my client, I was a SecUnit. There was no emotional contract between us. There was no rational reason for me to sound like a whiny human baby.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.207)
All misgivings that Ashby had about buying modder equipment vanished as Nib spoke to them about his tech. Nib already had the Wayfarer’s specs on hand, but he wanted to know more than just engine readouts and hull dimensions. He wanted details.
Topic: truth
Space Opera (p.64)
He’d only said what he meant, which was, when you thought about it, a minor superpower, because so few people ever did.
Topic: understanding
All Systems Red (p.116)
I felt the brush of Mensah’s awareness in the feed. She must have woken when Gurathin spoke. He finally said, “You don’t blame humans for what you were forced to do? For what happened to you?”
Topic: utility
All Systems Red (p.21)
Mensah had seen me when she signed the rental contract. But she had barely looked at me and I had barely looked at her because again, murderbot + actual human = awkwardness. Keeping the armor on all the time cuts down on unnecessary interaction.
Topic: value
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.161)
She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community.
Topic: victory
Space Opera (p.197)
“We have always believed that one of the hallmarks of sentience is the ability to look down upon others.”
Topic: vocabulary
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (pp.163-164)
At first, Rosemary had assumed that it was some sort of tech lingo, but no, Jenks had quietly confirmed that this was Kizzy’s own special way of staying organized. Rosemary squinted at the screen. 5500 credits (ish)–WRSS. She made a flicking motion with her left hand, pulling up a file entitled ‘Kizzyspeak,’ her cheat sheet for acronyms that she had deciphered. ES (Engine Stuff). TB (Tools and Bits). CRCT (Circuits). But no, WRSS wasn’t there. She made a note to ask Kizzy about it.
Space Opera (p.64)
He’d only said what he meant, which was, when you thought about it, a minor superpower, because so few people ever did.
Space Opera (p.84)
…Binned–a word which had come, over the millenia, to mean: carefully, lovingly recorded for posterity by the Elakhon and preserved against the ravages of time, war, and the children’s disrespect for history.
Space Opera (p.31)
It blossomed all over again into cosmic grief at the ultimate impossibility of communication between two living beings.
Space Opera (p.40)
I’ll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life.
Topic: vulnerability
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.137)
She wished someone would give her that sort of attention on a whim. She wished she were confident enough to give it back.
Topic: war
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.145)
“I know. But you’re a good woman. The things you have to do don’t change that. And your species– you know how to end a war. Truly end it. It doesn’t get in your blood. You do what needs doing and leave it at that.”
Topic: wellness
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.90)
A past birthday gift from Kizzy, who always ignored the fact that none of the non-Human crew members traditionally celebrated birthdays.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.119)
Alongside such oddities, his small stature was nothing special. It was hard to feel weird in a place where everybody was weird.
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.33)
“…on a long haul, this” – she tapped the top of Rosemary’s head– “needs to be the most important thing you take care of.”
Topic: wonder
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.4)
But the constant sounds of people working and laughing and fighting all around him had become a comfort. The open was an empty place to be, and there were moments when even the most seasoned spacer might look to the star-flecked void outside with humility and awe.
Topic: work
All Systems Red (p.26)
Basically freehold generally meant shitshow so I hadn’t been expecting much from them. But they were surprisingly easy to work for.
All Systems Red (p.27)
Part of it is, they didn’t want me here. Not here in their hub, but here on the planet.
Topic: worry
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.93)
“I did the same thing when my daughters were off at war. That’s why I don’t like that he’s doing it. I know how all that wondering can eat away at a person.”
Topic: writing
Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (p.187)
This paper has far too little space for me to write everything I want to say, so know this: I love you, and I think of you always.