Babylon's Ashes

I thought if you told people facts, they'd draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don't run on facts. We run on stories about things. About people.

Do we have a plan?” “A couple.” Jim said. “Either of them good?” “Oh, no. Not at all. Just different flavors of terrible.

History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect.

Against all evidence, I keep thinking the assholes are outliers.

You use a welding rig to weld things. You use a gun to shoot things. You use a Bobbie Draper to fuck a bunch of bad guys permanently up.

I have killed, but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid.

My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.” At

Whoever screws up last loses. Whoever screws up second to last wins. That’s what war is.

We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us.

We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine.” “Men are fighters,” Naomi said, and then, her voice growing bleak. “Women are nurturing and sweet and they stay home with the kids. It’s always been like that. We always react to the stories about people, not who they really are.” “And look where it got us,” Holden said.

It’s a war. Wars aren’t like that.” “Aren’t like what?” Roberts said. “Aren’t like stories about wars,” Vandercaust answered solemnly. “Stories about wars come after.

I mean, weird, dead alien technology with effects we don’t understand sweeping whole ships away without leaving a trace or explanation. That’s probably safe to play with, right?

I told you before that Johnson would be off the board, and he will be. We didn’t take him at Tycho, and we’ll take him somewhere else. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time.” Rosenfeld looked down at his bulb, his body hunching a degree in submission. Filip had felt his father’s victory like it was his own. “Didn’t finish reading that book, did you?” Rosenfeld asked mildly.

The same beautiful bullshit that everyone told themselves. That they were special. That they mattered. That some vast intelligence behind the curtains of reality cared what happened to them. And in all the history of the species, they’d all died anyway. “Attention,

The messages coming back flooded the comm buffers with rage and sorrow, threats of vengeance and offers of aid. Those last were the hardest. New colonies still trying to force their way into local ecosystems so exotic that their bodies could hardly recognize them as life at all, isolated, exhausted, sometimes at the edge of their resources. And what they wanted was to send back help. He listened to their voices, saw the distress in their eyes. He couldn't help, but love them a little bit. Under the best conditions, disasters and plagues did that. It wasn't universally true. There would always be hoarders and price gouging, people who closed their doors to refugees and left them freezing and starving. But the impulse to help was there too. To carry a burden together, even if it meant having less for yourself. Humanity had come as far as it had in a haze of war, sickness, violence, and genocide. History was drenched in blood. But it also had cooperation and kindness, generosity, intermarriage. The one didn’t come without the other.

The keel-mounted rail gun pushed the whole ship backward in a solid mathematical relationship to the mass of the two-kilo tungsten round moving at a measurable fraction of c. Newton’s third law expressed as violence. Holden’s

Because he’s Amos. He’s like a pit bull. You know he could tear your throat out, but he’s loyal to a fault and you just want to hug him.” She

Anyway, that’s not what I meant when I said Marco decides when he wins. You don’t understand how slippery he can be. Whatever happens, he’ll shift so it was his plan all along. If he were the last person alive, he’d say we needed the apocalypse and declare victory. It’s what he is.

Inaros isn’t going to chase after the Giambattista and Rocinante, because he’ll be distracted by the largest and most aggressive fleet action in history kicking his balls up into his throat. By the time he understands what we were really after, it’ll be too late for him to do anything but hold his dick and cry. But I need to know that you’re in.

All through human history, being a moral person and not being pulled into the dramatics and misbehavior of others had caused intelligent people grief. Dawes

But, Bobbie? Really, really don’t die out there.” “No one lives forever, sir,” Bobbie said, “but as long as it doesn’t compromise the mission, I’ll try to live through it.” “Thanks.

All beautiful things should have just a little sorrow about them. Made them seem real.

and the Mark Watney, out of Mars.

It was like solving a complex math puzzle without any promise that an optimal solution existed.

I thought if you told people facts, they’d draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things.

You all right?” He smiled. “Why do you ask?” “Because you’re not all right,” she said.

Keel-mounted rail gun,” Alex said with a grin. “—that scream of overcompensating for tiny, tiny penises, but might prove useful.

Do we have a plan?” “A couple,” Jim said. “Either of them good?” “Oh, no. Not at all. Just different flavors of terrible.

The keel-mounted rail gun pushed the whole ship backward in a solid mathematical relationship to the mass of the two-kilo tungsten round moving at a measurable fraction of c. Newton’s third law expressed as violence.

I thought if you told people facts, they’d draw their conclusions, and because the facts were true, the conclusions mostly would be too. But we don’t run on facts. We run on stories about things. About people. Naomi

My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.

Knowing that all you can give isn’t enough is its own burden.

It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,” so also in history the new view says: “It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.

Humanity had come as far as it had in a haze of war, sickness, violence, and genocide. History was drenched in blood. But it also had cooperation and kindness, generosity, intermarriage. The one didn’t come without the other, and Holden had to take comfort in that. The sense that however terrible humanity’s failings were, there was still a little more in them worth admiring.

The problem, of course, with the idea of nature versus nurture was that it posed a choice between determinisms.

It wasn’t as though they had a second Earth to use as a control. History itself was a massive n = 1 study, irreproducible. It was what made it so difficult to learn from.

Next is enough,” Naomi said. “As long as you always see the next step, you can walk the whole way.

He looked like a kid who just realized he’d jumped in the deep end of the pool and was trying to figure out whether he should embarrass himself by shouting for help or drown with a little dignity.

Human violence as a kind of fractal—self-similar on all scales from bar fight to system-wide war. The buildup of insults and lost face that swelled over the course of an evening or a century. The shoving and shoving back, neither side sure they wanted to escalate and uncertain how to back down.

We're spending our whole lives together, so we need to be really gentle. Because that was always true. The Abbey and Eudoxia were small enough it became impossible to ignore it, but even among the teeming billions of Earth, they were spending their lives together. They needed to be gentle. And understanding. And careful. It had been true in the depths of history, and at the height of Earth's power, and it would be true now that they were scattering to the more than a thousand new suns. Maybe, if they could find a way to be gentle, the stars would be better off with them.