Charles Stross Quotes page 4

“Criminology, the study of crime and its causes, has a fundamental weak spot: it studies that proportion of the criminal population who are stupid or unlucky enough to get caught. The perfect criminal, should he or she exist, would be the one who is never apprehended—indeed, the one whose crimes may be huge but unnoticed, or indeed miscategorized as not crimes at all because they are so powerful they sway the law in their favor, or so clever they discover an immoral opportunity for criminal enterprise before the legislators notice it. Such forms of criminality may be indistinguishable, at a distance, from lawful business; the criminal a paragon of upper-class virtue, a face-man for Forbes.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Fuller Memorandum (2010), Chapter 2, “Pointing the Finger” (p. 32)

“The literary James Bond is a creation of prewar London club-land: upper-crust, snobbish, manipulative and cruel in his relationships with women, with a thinly veiled sadomasochistic streak and a coldly ruthless attitude to his opponents that verges on the psychopathic.”

Afterword, “The Golden Age of Spying” (pp. 388-389)
The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006)

“I head off to the conference room for the Ways and Means Committee meeting—to investigate new ways of being mean, as Bridget (may Nyarlathotep rest her soul) once it explained it to me.”

Afterword, “The Golden Age of Spying” (p. 385)
The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006)

“Why are you trying to shoot that cat?”

Pimpf (p. 365)
The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006)

“The dirty little secret of the intelligence-gathering job is that information doesn’t just want to be free—it wants to hang out on street corners wearing gang colors and terrorizing the neighbors.”

”Because—” I squeeze off another shot “—it’s possessed!”...
Mo turns and looks at me harshly. “That looked just like a perfectly ordinary cat to me. If you’ve—”
“It was possessed by the animation nexus behind JENNIFER MORGUE Two!” I gabble. “The clue—he saw a laser dot and dodged—”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 16, “Reflex Decision” (p. 329; ellipsis represents a half-page elision)

“Most of what we get up to in the Laundry is symbolic computation intended to evoke decidedly nonsymbolic consequences. But that’s not all there is to…well, any sufficiently alien technology is indistinguishable from magic, so let’s call it that, all right? You can do magic by computation, but you can also do computation by magic. The law of similarity attracts unwelcome attention from other proximate universes, other domains where the laws of nature worked out differently. Meanwhile, the law of contagion spreads stuff around. Just as it’s possible to write a TCP/IP protocol stack in some utterly inappropriate programming language like ML or Visual Basic, so, too, it’s possible to implement TCP/IP over carrier pigeons, or paper tape, or daemons summoned from the vasty deep.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 12, “Power Breakfast” (p. 254)

“I stare longingly at the bare chunk of space on the desktop. There may be a keyboard stitched into the lining of my cummerbund, but without a machine to plug it into it’s about as much use as a chocolate hacksaw.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 12, “Power Breakfast” (p. 254)

“He stabs at the mouse mat with one finger and I wince. But instead of fat purple sparks and a hideous soul-sucking manifestation, it simply wakes up his Windows box.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 12, “Power Breakfast” (p. 234)

“Yup, that pretty much confirms the diagnosis. This is the desk of a diseased mind, hugely ambitious, prone to taking insanely dangerous risks. He’s not ashamed of boasting about it—he clearly believes in better alpha-primate dominance displays through carpentry.”

Not that there’s much difference.
Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 11, “Destiny Entangled” (p. 222)

“Nobody taught me how to say no when a beautiful naked woman begs me to take my clothes off.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 11, “Destiny Entangled” (p. 218)

“My stomach flip-flops. No electronics? That’s heavy. In fact it’s more than heavy: to compute is to be, and all that. I don’t mind going without clothes, but being without a microprocessor is truly stripping down. It’s like asking a sorcerer to surrender his magic wand, or a politician to forswear his lies.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 7, “Nightmare Beach” (p. 144)

“In this line of work, too much paranoia can be worse than too little.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 7, “Nightmare Beach” (p. 143)

“I’m still wearing my shoes, I realize. And I’m still wearing this fucking suit. I didn’t even take it off for the flight—I must be turning into a manager or something. I have a sudden urge to wash compulsively. At least the tie’s snaked off to wherever the horrid things live when they’re not throttling their victims.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 5, “High Society” (p. 101)

“Not only is the past another country, it’s one that doesn’t issue visas.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 5, “High Society” (pp. 100-101)

“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.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 4, “You’re in the Jet Set Now” (p. 75)

“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…”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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?”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

Charles Stross book Rule 34

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“Talk you of tradition in middle of singularity.”

“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

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)

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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?”

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

“Politics is shit; it corrupts everything it touches, and getting involved in it only leads to misery and dissatisfaction.”

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.”

“Apocalypses are easier slept through than experienced.”

Source: Saturn's Children (2008), Chapter 9, “Coin-Operated Boy” (p. 157)

“I’ve known all along I’m not qualified for this—it’s not really imposter syndrome if you really are a fake.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Labyrinth Index (2018), Epilogue, “Debrief” (p. 360)

“American cops are so heavily militarized these days that the only way I can tell the difference between them and the army is the color of their body armor—that, and the army is less trigger-happy.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Labyrinth Index (2018), Chapter 11, “A Dead God Did It and Ran Away” (p. 347)