Quotes from book
Rule 34

Rule 34 is a near-future science fiction novel by Charles Stross. It is a loose sequel to Halting State, and was released on 5 July 2011 and 7 July 2011 . The title is a reference to the Internet meme Rule 34, which states that "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Rule 34 was nominated for the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2012 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.


Charles Stross photo

“Truly the jaws of irony are agape!”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 13, “Kemal: Spamcop” (p. 157)

Charles Stross photo

“Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience…In the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t want to move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.
“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is fundamentally misguided.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 286-287)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy, and time is the ultimate opponent.”

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

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Policing is one of those jobs that will always revolve around a meatspace hub, if only because you can’t build a cellblock in cyberspace.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 10, “Liz: Snowballing Hell” (p. 116)

Charles Stross photo

“Little white lies shining like baby teeth in a shallow grave.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 12, “Toymaker: Reality Excursion” (p. 143)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“I think we may be mistaking the elephant’s tail for a bell-pull.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (p. 279)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Perforce, the family that preys together stays together.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 22, “Toymaker: Happy Families” (p. 251)

Charles Stross photo

“The programmers have a saying, you know? ‘If we understand how we do it, it isn’t artificial intelligence anymore.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 16, “Liz: Mote, Eye, Redux” (p. 177)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Human consciousness isn’t optimized for anything, except maybe helping feral hominids survive in the wild.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 29, “Liz: Project ATHENA” (p. 305)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Policing, as with all procedural jobs, expands to fill all the time and consume all the resources available for it.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 20, “Liz: Bereavement Counselling” (p. 226)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Ninety-five percent of all human-readable traffic over the net is spam, a figure virtually unchanged since the late noughties.”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 13, “Kemal: Spamcop” (p. 155)

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