There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities - potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry - that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.

Peter Watts delivers-solid, inventive hard sf about the deep sea, but as we've never seen before. This moves like the wind.

In a tough situation, don't avoid acting just because it's easier or comfortable. Don't lapse into a passive state. People who give up, die.

Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.

Once you've grown up in space, moving on means moving out, not going back to Earth. Nobody wants to be a groundpounder.

The biggest mistake is being too afraid of making one.

Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available