Schismatrix Plus

Life, and intelligence, do not mix very well.

Reality’s a horde of mice, nibbling away in the basement of your dreams.…

Stern social measures had to be adopted to keep entire populations from disintegrating in an orgy of plenty.

Do you remember, Abelard... Once I told you that ecstasy was better than being God." "I remember." "I was wrong, darling. Being God is better.

Mankind had always been surrounded by the miraculous. Nothing much had ever come of it.

Science tore the human race to bits. When anarchy hit, people struggled for community. The politicians chose enemies so that they could bind their followers with hate and terror. Community isn’t enough when a thousand new ways of life beckon from every circuit and test tube.

Mankind’s a dead issue now, cousin. There are no more souls. Only states of mind.

Your audience are whores, oxygen farmers, two dozen pirate bands, and fifty runaway mathematicians. They would all love to see dancing and fighting.

Listen, darling, being old is risky. The rest of it is just a matter of tactics.

Anywhere there is variety there is the risk of change. Change that can’t be tolerated.

He was a thing of flesh and blood, of life and death, not an Immanent Will. A tree drew strength from light, but it was not light itself. And life was a process of changing, but it was not change itself. That was what death was for.

They took my womb out, and they put in brain tissue. Grafts from the pleasure center, darling. I’m wired to the ass and the spine and the throat, and it’s better than being God. When I’m hot, I sweat perfume. I’m cleaner than a fresh needle, and nothing leaves my body that you can’t drink like wine or eat like candy. And they left me bright, so that I would know what submission was. Do you know what submission is, darling?

SCHISMATRIX is a creeping sea-urchin of a book—spikey and odd. It isn’t very elegant, and it lacks bilateral symmetry, but pieces of it break off inside people and stick with them for years.

Death defeats us in the end. But our children are our revenge against it.

Stripping's bad form, these days," he said. "It's lost all meaning. People do it just to punctuate a conversation.

Let's throw his ass out the airlock," suggested the Speaker of the House. "We can't do that," said the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was a feeble old Mechanist who was subject to nosebleeds. "He is still Secretary of State and can't be sentenced without impeachment by the Senate." The three Senators, two men and a woman, looked interested. The Senate didn't see much action in the government of the tiny Democracy. They were the least trusted members of the crew and were outnumbered by the House.

For a moment, sincere human fury had burned through the training, touched a hot core of genuine rage. He felt shaken, but more whole, more truly himself, then he'd been for years.

The politicians chose enemies so that they could bind their followers with hate and terror.

in the bowels of this nameless little world, is a genetic technology that feeds itself, maintains itself, runs itself, efficiently, endlessly, mindlessly. It’s the perfect organic tool. The faction that could use these tireless workers could make itself an industrial titan.

I see life for what it is now. That’s why I know I must do this.” He put the poison to his lips, and drank it down.

But to measure myself against life and death, as if I could go on forever.… There’s no dignity in that. What are we to life? We’re only sparks.

Time had a way of making passion into work. He had what he wanted. He had his dream. He had to live it and breathe it and do its budget.

History’s kaleidoscope worked its permutations, its pace ever faster, approaching some unknown crescendo. Patterns changed and warped and flew apart, each chip of light a human life.

Wellspring looked grave. “You realize that an entire future destiny might accrete around this momentary utterance? It’s from just such nuclei of free will that the future grows, in smooth determinism.

He knew suddenly that if he fell he would fall forever. Into the abyss, plunging into his own terror and defeat, endlessly, through the self-spinning labyrinth, mind frozen in boundless anguish, a maze of unending experience, unending fright, implacable walls, halls, steps, ramps, crypts, vaults, passages, always icy, always out of reach.

He could see time lying on the world like a sheen, a frozen blur of movement chopped out of context and painted onto the surface of the cold stone like alien shellac.

To the truly old, time was as thin as air, a keening and destructive wind that erased their pasts and attacked their memories.

I can’t ask you to change,” her husband said. “People only change if you give them time.

We don’t think the way they want us to,” the girl said. “And they’ll kill us for it. But not until we’ve pried the worldskull open and put our needles in.