Quotes from book
Synners

Synners
Pat Cadigan

In Synners, the line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim. To be a Synner is to join the online hardcore, an outlaw band of hackers, simulation pirates, and reality synthesizers hooked on artificial reality and virtual space. Now you can change yourself to suit the machines - all it costs you is your freedom, and your humanity. Synners shows us a world perilously close to our own. A constant stream of new technology spawns new crime before it hits the streets, and the human mind and the external landscape have fused to the point where any encounter with "reality" is incidental. Equal parts thrill-ride and cautionary tale, this classic novel by the Queen of Cyberpunk offers us a terrifying glimpse into the future of our race. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel, 1992

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“Everything seemed to happen when you were looking the other way.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 22 (p. 238)

Pat Cadigan photo

“The only place to go now is into the context. If you can find it. Between the context and the content, between the mainline and the hardline, falls the shadow.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 29 (p. 334)

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“It was a lonely thing. There was no way to be sure if it meant the same thing to both of you. He’d forgotten that part of making love, how you couldn’t assume that intent was as joined as bodies were.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 22 (p. 234)

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“That was it, then, civilization was officially collapsed if the cops had stopped ticketing abandoned cars and roosted on them instead.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 31 (p. 364)

Pat Cadigan photo

“Keep your best whiskey in a bottle marked ‘mouthwash.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 5 (p. 57)

Pat Cadigan photo

“Nothing stays the same, Gina, nothing works forever. If I don’t like it, that’s too bad. If you don’t like it, that’s still too bad.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 11 (p. 113)

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“The authenticity may have been dubious, but the excitement had been real.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 9 (p. 93)

Pat Cadigan photo

“The Beater has still been young enough to feel immortal, at least on his better days. It was all, Wow, if we don’t slow down, we’re gonna die before we get old, except somehow it hadn’t happened that way. So they’d all assumed it never would, not dying, not getting old—hell, not even growing up.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 11 (p. 109)

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“He had the sudden urge to put his arms around her, but the look on her face said that if he made a move toward her, she would move away, and maybe she would keep moving away from him until the distance between them was too great to cross again in one lifetime.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 29 (p. 339)

Pat Cadigan photo

“Ninety percent of life was being there, and the rest was being there on time.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 32 (p. 389)

Pat Cadigan photo

“Reaching in, he wrapped the exposed wires around his fingers and ripped them out. The locks released, letting the door fall open a crack.
“That’s what we call a Luddite hack.””

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 29 (p. 338)

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“Fez gave her a squeeze. “You’re a genius, Sam-I-Am.”
She squirmed away from him uncomfortably. “It just makes sense, is all.””

Pat Cadigan book Synners

“Sometimes that’s all it takes to be a genius.”
Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 32 (p. 387)

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“‘Truth is cheap, but information costs.’ I can’t remember who said that.”
“Vince What’s-His-Name,” said Sam. “Died in a terrorist raid or something. I thought you said all information should be free.”
“It should. It isn’t. Knowledge is power. But power corrupts. Which means the Age of Fast Information is an extremely corrupt age in which to live.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

“Aren’t they all?” Sam asked him.
Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 5 (pp. 52-53)

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“If you’re really going to die on me, you could at least rub my neck before you go.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 1 (p. 2)

Pat Cadigan photo

“If you can’t fuck it, and it doesn’t dance, eat it or throw it away.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 29 (p. 334; catch phrase repeated several times in the book)

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