There isn’t very much of the little boy left in Oscar; he didn’t get to his position without being able to keep it under very tight control.

Sociopath” was one of the most useful concepts that Miriam’s Memetic Engineering Task Force had imported from the United States: Erasmus’s Propaganda Ministry had been working overtime to raise awareness of it as an Anti-Democratic Problem: “People who think People are Things.

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.

What I read: while I’m writing, I tend to go off reading fiction for relaxation – especially the challenging stuff. It’s too much like the day job.

We use committees for all the ulterior purposes for which they might have been designed: diffusion of executive responsibility, plausible deniability, misdirection, providing the appearance of activity without the substance, and protecting the guilty.

All right.” Panin sips at his wine. “Excuse me, but – there is a personal connection?” “What?” “You appear unduly upset... ” “Yes.” She looks at her hands. “The missing officer is my husband.” Panin puts his glass down and leans back, very slowly, with the extreme self-control of a man who has just realized he is sharing a table with a large, ticking bomb. “Is there anything I can do to help?” “Yes.

Death is really no more than the voluntary liquidation of an economy of microscopic free agents, the redemption of the debt of structured life.

Anyway, you don’t have to be terribly intelligent to complete a PhD,” Karim grumps. “You just need to be stupidly persistent. If anything, being too smart gets in the way –.

There are good ways and bad ways to get my attention. Whacking on my ego with a crowbar will get my attention, sure, but it’s not going to leave me well disposed to the messenger.

The Laundry field operations manual is notably short on advice for how to comport one’s self when being held prisoner aboard a mad billionaire necromancer’s yacht, other than the usual stern admonition to keep receipts for all expenses incurred in the line of duty.