“People feared what they did not understand, and they without a doubt did not understand her. Those who believed they did least of all. She was something new.”

“2 SECONDSHe was on her in an instant to brace her against the wall. She kicked and clawed at her unseen attacker, skin and irises ablaze in caustic gold. She fired anew, and the point-blank shot br...”

“Alex screamed and lashed out at the points of light from within, desperate for something tangible to rage against. Caleb wrapped his arms around her from behind and coaxed her out while glaring at ...”

“Crushed sandstone sifted through Calebs fingers, insubstantial as dust. A breeze caught the debris mid-fall and spirited it away before it could join the ashes blanketing the ground. He stopped in ...”

“Well go along with it for now. Valkyrie, keep close watch and be ready to swoop to the rescue.Hopefully swooping will not be required, nor rescue. But I am ready to do both.He squeezed her hand. Al...”

“The universe is not ordered, and it will not become so simply because one wishes it. The universe is chaos made manifest. The military does a fine job of creating an illusion of structure, of depen...”

“When artificial intelligence comes of age, the first thing it's going to do is get rid of the inefficient parts.And guess who that will be!And what will happen to us?Well, to find out the answer to...”

“The intelligence we will create from the reverse-engineering of the brain will have access to its own source code and will be able to rapidly improve itself in an accelerating iterative design cycl...”

“The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.”

“We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. Were pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes.”

“We all know interspecies romance is weird.”

“Depression isn't a war you win. It's a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It's one bloody fray after another.”

“The Tausennigan Ob'enn warlords look like cuddly teddy-bears?""Yes, they do, and they'd cheerfully exterminate your entire race for making that observation!""I guess that explains their rich milita...”

“Casting a curious gaze down on planet Earth, extra-terrestrial beings could well be forgiven for assuming that we humans are programmed in every move we make, by a palm-sized, oblong, slab of glass...”

“It was certainly true that I had no sense of humour in that I found nothing funny. I didnt know, and perhaps would never know, the feeling of compulsion to exhale and convulse in the very specific ...”