Charles Stross: Trending quotes (page 10)

“I have a feeling that a bored Ramona would be a very bad girl indeed, in a your-life-insurance-policy-just-expired kind of way.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 3, “Tangled Up in Grue” (p. 53)

Girl , Bad luck , Way , Life

“PowerPoint is symptomatic of a certain type of bureaucratic environment: one typified by interminable presentations with lots of fussy little bullet-points and flashy dissolves and soundtracks masked into the background, to try to convince the audience that the goon behind the computer has something significant to say. It’s the tool of choice for pointy-headed idiots with expensive suits and skinny laptops who desperately want to look as if they’re in command of the job, with all the facts at their fiddling fingertips, even if Rome is burning in the background. Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint. And that’s just scratching the surface…”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 2, “Going Down to Dunwich” (pp. 42-43)

“I’m only twenty-eight: I’m too young to die and too old to drive fast.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 1, “Random Ramona” (p. 19)

“Some of the worst crimes against humanity are committed by architecture students.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 1, “Random Ramona” (p. 18)

“Bet you he’s a smart sociopath, the kind that does well in midlevel management, all fur coat and no knickers—and willing to shed blood without a second thought if it’s to defend his position.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

The Concrete Jungle (p. 305)
The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives (2004)

“Didn’t they know that the only unhackable computer is one that’s running a secure operating system, welded inside a steel safe, buried under a ton of concrete at the bottom of a coal mine guarded by the SAS and a couple of armoured divisions, and switched off?”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

The Concrete Jungle (p. 275)
The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives (2004)

“Do you want me to strangle him now, or wait till he’s finished annoying you?”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives (2004), Chapter 7, “Bad Moon Rising” (p. 163)

Waiting

“Imagine a world where speaking or writing words can literally and directly make things happen, where getting one of those words wrong can wreak unbelievable havoc, but where with the right spell you can summon immensely powerful agencies to work your will. Imagine further that this world is administered: there is an extensive division of labour, among the magicians themselves and between the magicians and those who coordinate their activity. It’s bureaucratic, and also (therefore) chaotic, and it’s full of people at desks muttering curses and writing invocations, all beavering away at a small part of the big picture. The coordinators, because they don’t understand what’s going on, are easy prey for smooth-talking preachers of bizarre cults that demand arbitrary sacrifices and vanish with large amounts of money. Welcome to the IT department.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Ken MacLeod in Introduction: Charlie’s Demons (p. xvi)
The Laundry Files, The Atrocity Archives (2004)

Money , Imagination , Understanding , People

“It turns out you left something rather important off your career plan: for example, there’s no ticky-box on the diagram for HAVING A LIFE—TASK COMPLETED. And so you kept putting it off, and de-prioritized it, and put it off again until the law of conservation of shit-stirring dragged it front and centre and lamped you upside yer heid, as your clients might put it.”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 1, “Liz: Red Pill, Blue Pill” (p. 16)

Life , Box , Law

“Simple old-fashioned death, the kind that predated the singularity, used to be the inevitable halting state for all life-forms. Fairy tales about afterlives notwithstanding.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

A dry chuckle: “I used to try to believe a different one before breakfast every day, you know, just in case Pascal’s wager was right—exploring the phase-space of all possible resurrections, you know? But I think at this point we can agree that Dawkins was right. Human consciousness is vulnerable to certain types of transmissible memetic virus, and religions that promise life beyond death are a particularly pernicious example because they exploit our natural aversion to halting states.”
Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), pp. 396-397

Fashion , Life , Death

“A religious college in Cairo is considering issues of nanotechnology: If replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of a pig, how is it to be treated?”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

If the mind of one of the faithful is copied into a computing machine’s memory by mapping and simulating all its synapses, is the computer now a Moslem? If not, why not? If so, what are its rights and duties?
Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 4 (“Halo”), pp. 146-147

Parting

“Things have gone downhill since Mom decided a modal average dose of old-time religion was an essential part of her upbringing, to the point that absolutely the best thing in the world Tante Annette could send her is some scam programmed by Daddy to take her away. If it doesn’t work, Mom will take her to Church tonight, and she’s certain she’ll end up making a scene again. Amber’s tolerance of willful idiocy is diminishing rapidly, and while building up her memetic immunity might be the real reason Mom’s forcing this shit on her—it’s always hard to tell with Mom—things have been tense ever since she got expelled from Sunday school for mounting a spirited defense of the theory of evolution.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 4 (“Halo”), p. 130

School , Religion , Time , Moms

“Sounds kind of long-term to me. Just how far ahead do you think?”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

“Very long-term—at least twenty, thirty years. And you can forget governments for this market, Bob; if they can’t tax it, they won’t understand it.”
Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 1 (“Lobsters”), pp. 14-15

Thinking

“Talk you of tradition in middle of singularity.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Sister Seventh twisted her head around to look out the windows at the foggy evening drizzle beyond. “Perplexity maximizes. Not understand singularity is discontinuity with all tradition? Revolution is necessary; deconstruct the old, ring in the new. Before, I questioned your sapience. Now, your sanity questionable; sapience not. Only sapient organism could exhibit superlative irrationality!”
Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 144)

“Quote, the viability of a postsingularity economy of scarcity is indicated by the transition from an indirection-layer-based economy using markers of exchange of goods and services to a tree-structured economy characterized by optimal allocation of productivity systems in accordance with iterated tit-for-tat prisoner’s dilemma. Money is a symptom of poverty and inefficiency. Unquote.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 143)

Money , Optimism , Tree , Quotes

“It’s amazing how much work you can get done in three days if you hold a blowtorch to each end of the candle.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 7, “Officer Friendly” (p. 113)

“I’m not a politician, even though I play-act one when the boss tells me to—I’m allowed to change my mind when my understanding of the facts changes.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Labyrinth Index (2018), Chapter 10, “Flight Plan” (p. 301)

Understanding , Change

“See? Interstellar colonization is easy! You just need to devote a visible percentage of the resource of an entire interplanetary civilization to it for several hundred years, placing it in the tireless and efficient hands of robots ordered to strive for the goal for as long as it takes.”

Charles Stross Saturn's Children

Source: Saturn's Children (2008), Chapter 17, “Interview with the Domina” (p. 304)

“The number one crime in any age: offending the money.”

Charles Stross Saturn's Children

Source: Saturn's Children (2008), Chapter 16, “Long-Lost Sibs” (p. 268)

Money , Age

“Freedom? The word tastes bitter. What’s freedom ever done for me? Seems to me I’ve been free almost all my life, but what has it gotten me? Really?”

Charles Stross Saturn's Children

Source: Saturn's Children (2008), Chapter 15, “”Revising My Opinions” (pp. 253-254)
Context: She’s silent for only a moment. “Ask not what it’s gotten you, kid. Ask what it’s saved you from.”

Freedom , Life