Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity - a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied - and the world will pass beyond our understanding.

Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years-and not one of them could come near to this!

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.