Quotes from Melissa Scott

Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, availble, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire.

You had to draw lines, and that choice was in itself dangerous; all boundaries had a double edge, were like swords that could always be turned against you in the end. But you still had to choose.

There were still too many people who were afraid of a technology that eluded them, still more who would never have access and resented and feared it in equal measures. Mobilize those groups just once, find a demagogue-and there always were demagogues-and the nets would find themselves destroyed.

You know damn well that's not how the wire works, and if you weren't afraid of it, you'd have one yourself. It's the same as the implants, just like the dollie-slots, but it gives me an edge, yeah, because I'm not afraid of it, of what I can do with it.

Alice in Wonderland, Alice down the rabbit hole, Alice out in Cyberspace, flung along the lines of data, flying across fields of light, the night cities that live only behind her eyes.

Power rides her fingers, she moves from datashell to datashell, walking the nets like the ghost of a shadow, her trail vanishing behind her as she goes. She carries power in the dark behind her eyes.

like all of her, wrong sex, wrong class, wrong attitude...

This is what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumes that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn't.

This was what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumed that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn't...rather than ever admit fear, they walked with raised hackles, looking for a fight.

she can feel that burden sometimes like a wall pressing in over the dome of the false sky that bounds the city. *Someone has to*, she says again, as if the ghost is somewhere in the machines that create this Seaheaven, as if he might have cared and turns away, walks back down the vivid street, the dust soft and almost real against her feet.

I'M NOT buying it, Daniel.

The door to this building was left not only unlocked but ajar. As we are not generally in the business of inviting burglars to walk in and make themselves at home, I do hope you have an excellent explanation. We were being pursued by a writing desk that eats men's hearts, Julian said. Oppenshaw considered that. Interesting, he said.

If you're quite done, gentlemen, I'll thank you to remove the corpses for the sake of the floor, Oppenshaw said. It is troublesome to sand. Thank you, Mr Mathey, this was quite interesting. I would encourage you to write it up for the British Journal of Metaphysics, but I very much doubt you'd be allowed to publish.

I am sincerely sorry, Ned said. There's a delicate matter we need to speak to you about. The blood went out of Straun's face. Who's dead now? Not that matter.

He looked up with sharp incisive eyes. What do we need a metaphysician for? Don't tell me some rejected author has put a curse on us. Not today, Fletcher said.

He proposed that she leave school at once and marry him, as surely she knew enough metaphysics already to keep house. I take it she didn't take the suggestion well. She threw a full cup of tea in his face.

Miss Frost put her fingers to her forehead. Do explain, Maddy. You're making it sound as if you've fallen into some unspeakable sin. You might say so, Miss Barton said. I wrote a book.

The Yard needs a young man for this, someone who's not afraid of tramping through muck to look at dead bodies and figure out how they got that way. He cast an apologetic sidelong glance at Miss Frost. I positively thrive on reports of gruesome murder, she said.

They usually spent the night apart, though in the morning they woke twined more often than not, as though in sleep in their bodies sought each other. In wine and dream comes truth: the old proverb slipped through his mind unbidden.

Whereas I like to worry early and avoid the rush," O'Neill said.