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7c31cce
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My colleague Bruce Sterling has defined a thriller as a science fiction novel that includes the President of the United States.
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Neal Stephenson |
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2926a2a
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A straightforward way of defining metaphysics is as the set of assumptions and practices present in the scientist's mind before he or she begins to do science.
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Neal Stephenson |
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46bf73f
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You have responsibilities now, Bob. You must lose this naive understanding of violence! You are embarrassin' me in front of the lads! You can't play by their rules or they'll win unfailingly! You don't engage in courtly play-fightin' with one such as this. You get a great friggin' tree-branch and keep hittin' him with it until he dies. Like that. D'you see, boys?
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Neal Stephenson |
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a4e4262
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And then there's The Enforcers--but they cost a lot and don't take well to supervision. It is rumored that, under their uniforms, they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick, emblazoned with the words SUE ME.
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Neal Stephenson |
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c06b6ba
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As your demeanor has been nonaggressive and you carry no visible weapons, we are not authorized to employ heroic measures to ensure your cooperation," the first MetaCop says. "You stay cool and we'll stay cool," the second MetaCop says."
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Neal Stephenson |
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26c664f
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He could have kept his money in The Black Sun and made ten million dollars about a year later when it went public, but his mother would have been a street person. So when his mother visits him in the Metaverse, looking tan and happy in her golfing duds, Hiro views that as his personal fortune. It won't pay the rent, but that's okay--when you live in a shithole, there's always the Metaverse, and in the Metaverse, Hiro Protagonist is a warrio..
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Neal Stephenson |
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a475b8e
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THE MOON BLEW UP WITHOUT WARNING AND FOR NO APPARENT reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full.
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Neal Stephenson |
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02f6acd
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The rule of thumb we've been using is that Deolaters are welcome as long as they're not certain they're right," I said. "As soon as you're sure you're right, there's no point in your being here." --
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Neal Stephenson |
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3884002
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Has anyone you know ever been ritually mutilated because they were seen reading a book?
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Neal Stephenson |
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90e9d93
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Today's liturgy was something to do with developments in finite group theorics that had taken place about thirteen hundred years ago and that had caused their originator, Saunt Bly, to be Thrown Back by his Warden Regulant and to live out the remainder of his days on top of a butte surrounded by slines who worshipped him as a god. He even inspired them to stop consuming blithe, whereupon they became surly, killed him, and ate his liver out ..
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Neal Stephenson |
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5f07f51
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But unbidden and unwanted thoughts are the hardest to expel from one's mind.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f47e268
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It is what you don't expect," he'd said, "that most needs looking for."
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Neal Stephenson |
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475ec5a
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You have criminals?" "Of course." But the mere fact that Quin responded in this way caused Orolo to jump to a new leaf of the questionnaire. "How do you know?" "What?!" "You say of course there are criminals, but if you look at a particular person, how do you know whether or not he is a criminal? Are criminals branded? Tattooed? Locked up? Who decides who is and isn't a criminal? Does a woman with shaved eyebrows say 'you are a criminal' an..
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Neal Stephenson |
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c893d17
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Even though we didn't say anything, we were in dialog: a peregrin dialog, meaning two equals wandering around trying to work something out, as opposed to a suvinian dialog where a fid is being taught by a mentor, or a Periklynian dialog, which is combat.
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Neal Stephenson |
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5d7a23b
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These people are as happy as, say, Fraa Orolo. They get what they want: naked ladies on their wheels. He gets what he wants: upsight to the mysteries of the universe.
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Neal Stephenson |
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898cec8
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He did not seem to grasp something that was clear enough to me and Cord: namely, that there were extras who would beat up avout simply because it was more entertaining than not beating them up--not because they subscribed to some ridiculous theory of what we were. He was assuming that rapscallions bothered to have theories.
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Neal Stephenson |
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00000db
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Hygiene isn't really about dirt. It's about germs. It's to prevent the spread of sequences that are dangerous if they are allowed to propagate. We don't think the Ita are dirty in the sense of not washing. But their whole purpose is to work with information that spreads in a promiscuous way.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3868331
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The answer was that it was about twenty degrees west of their projected apogee, encircling a large new habitat called Akureyri, and heading generally in the direction of the Cape Verde boneyard that separated the Greenwich segment from the Rio segment. Which meant that it would soon be in the predominantly Ivyn part of the ring.
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Neal Stephenson |
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2b8eb88
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Diax said something that is still very important to us, which is that you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it.
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Neal Stephenson |
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aaa5c3a
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If this all seems ambiguous, that's because it is; and if that troubles you, you'd hate it here; but if it gives you a feeling of relief, then you are in the right place and might consider staying.
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Neal Stephenson |
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4f34504
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I was discussing it with my teacher, over the jeejah--no pictures, just our voices. We had this long talk about this nerve and the muscles and ligaments around it and how I should manipulate them to help alleviate the problem, and suddenly I just flashed on how weird the whole thing was--two of us both relating to this image--this model--of another person's body that was in his mind and in my mind, but--" "Also seemingly in a third place," ..
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Neal Stephenson |
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4fbfcab
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As soon as you open the door wide enough to admit pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, you have let in all of those other possibilities as well.
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Neal Stephenson |
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d17f922
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For one of the toxic things about Lineages was that rich avout could get not-so-rich ones to do things for them in exchange for better food, better drink, and better lodging.
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Neal Stephenson |
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c9ed3af
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the pole's center was a gleaming lump about the size of a person's head, which any Spacer would recognize as a small nickel-iron asteroid, as common in space as dead leaves were on the reforested surface. But rare down here, even after the Hard Rain.
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Neal Stephenson |
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1273a67
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Einstein followed her as if his eyes were connected to her butt cheeks with fishhooks.
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Neal Stephenson |
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9df8906
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All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units.
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Neal Stephenson |
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b2deee0
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atmosphere, but she connected them anyway, as well as a power cable. Then she reached back behind her, all the way down to
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Neal Stephenson |
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5662a51
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The Victorian era was an age of superlatives and larger-than-life characters, and as far as that goes, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse fit right in: what Victoria was to monarchs, Dickens to novelists, Burton to explorers, Robert E. Lee to generals, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse was to assholes.
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Neal Stephenson |
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b8b2bf0
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It didn't matter whether "football" for you was soccer or the American sport played by men in helmets."
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Neal Stephenson |
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4c452a2
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Middle-class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones. The goal of all such persons seems to be to make themselves cuddly and nonthreatening.
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Neal Stephenson |
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5678a62
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a rugged but sensitive but tough but loving but horny but smart hero having his way with a protesting but willing but struggling but yielding tempestuous female.
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Neal Stephenson |
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56d9fbf
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The last ship home has sailed. From now on, launch vehicles will rise up into orbit, but they will not go back for ten thousand years.
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Neal Stephenson |
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6ea0322
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Jack could sound them out only through carousing with them over a period of weeks. Jack had long since lost interest in carousing per se, but he recalled how it was done, and could still put on a performance of carousing that looked sincere but was in fact wholly affected, shrewd, and calculating. He was helped in this by his two sons, who really meant it.
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Neal Stephenson |
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191383f
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A major street intersects, at something other than a ninety-degree angle, a smaller commercial street, defining two (smaller) acute-angle lots and two (larger) obtuse-angle lots. On one side of the major street, the obtuse-angle lot is occupied by a two-storey office building,
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Neal Stephenson |
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8d371b5
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The FBI hates and fears strong crypto.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e7317b1
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That man behaves so much like the villain in a work of literature, it's almost funny," Arsibalt observed."
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Neal Stephenson |
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4e0e19b
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the ambiguous conversation with the unseen serving-wench, the bags of hot-grease-scented food hurtling in through the window, condiments in packets, attempting to eat while lurching down a highway, volumes of messy litter that seemed to fill all the empty space in the mobe, a smell that outstayed its welcome.
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Neal Stephenson |
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1a28a40
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What do you think Orolo saw, when he looked out thus?" Fraa Jad asked. "He was a great appreciator of beauty and loved to look at the mountains from the starhenge," I said. "You think he saw beauty? That is a safe answer, since it is beautiful. But what was he thinking about? What connections did the beauty enable him to perceive?" "I couldn't possibly answer that." "Don't answer it. Ask it."
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Neal Stephenson |
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654d948
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but if you have studied that, everything since will seem like repetition and all the particulars as to how the Saecular Power of my day was organized will remind you of more or less ancient forerunners, but with less majesty and clarity since the ancients were all doing it for the first time and believed they were on to something.
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Neal Stephenson |
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29ccfa8
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You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy--but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself.
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Neal Stephenson |
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846e3e3
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The cathedral as a whole is awesome and stirring in spite, and possibly because, of the fact that we have no idea who built it. When we walk through it, we are communing not with individual stone carvers but with an entire culture.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3ffeced
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Most of the information on this topic is crap." "What do you mean by that?" Crade demanded. We all looked at him, because in an instant he had become markedly defensive. Sammann raised his eyes from the screen of the jeejah and gazed interestedly at Crade. He let a few moments go by, then responded in a calm and matter-of-fact tone: "Anyone can post information on any topic. The vast majority of what's on the Reticulum is, therefore, crap. ..
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Neal Stephenson |
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32f755b
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In any soul, the Condemned Man argued, was the ability to create a whole world, as big and variegated as the one that he and the Magistrate lived in. But if this was true of the Innocent, it was true of the Condemned Man as well, and so he should not--no one should ever--be put to death.
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Neal Stephenson |
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5886680
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Well, it seems that this process you call consciousness is somewhat more complex than you perhaps gave it credit for at first," Orolo said. "One must be able to take in givens from sparse dustings of probability waves in a vacuum--" "I.e., see stuff." "Yes, and perform the trick of integrating those givens into seemingly persistent objects that can be held in consciousness."
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Neal Stephenson |