Bruce Sterling

“I like to get paid for doing basic research, so it's pleasant to write some nonfiction about it.”

“I used to think that cyberspace was fifty years away. What I thought was fifty years away, was only ten years away. And what I thought was ten years away... it was already here. I just wasn't aware of it yet.”

“War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize 'world peace' even when we get it.”

“The future is unwritten. there are best case scenarios. There are worst-case scenarios. both of them are great fun to write about if you' re a science fiction novelist, but neither of them ever happens in the real world. What happens in the real world is always a sideways-case scenario. World-changing marvels to us, are only wallpaper to our children.”

“Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.”

“The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing.”

“The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses.”

“(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute”

“Well, they didn't lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it's just a few large buildings and aircraft, it's not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin.”

“They used to be seen as insane or unthinkable acts of madmen. But if they take place they'll be called 'war' too. And there will still be no conventional war.”

“Humans are very aggressive and scrappy, and go to war at the drop of a hat. However, a standard land war is no longer going to work as it is no longer technically possible.”

“I was once a student in a punk T-Shirt hooked on screwed-up scenarios. That's how I became the esteemed cultural figure that I am today.”

“I wouldn't describe that 'position' as 'parasitic.' I'd describe that experience as 'edifying.' I don't merely write from a critical intellectual distance. I actually live around here.”

“We might be on the brink of an apocalypse if, instead of poor people with suicide bombs killing middle class guys, middle-class people with suicide bombs started killing rich guys.”

“Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.”

“A security cam is one small part of a much larger universe of cams. The much larger effect, socially, politically and economically, is going to come from a much larger trend.”