He who controls the spice controls the universe.

Oh, Valkyrie, you have no idea.” Tell me then.

Subconsciously, we all want to be nebula… In the end, we’re all connected. We’re all going to become one cloud of light whether you like it or not. We’re all made of the same star...

A mix of revenge, sadness and anger funnels into a decision that’s so simple and neat, it could fit in my pocket. I will help Kudzu destroy Aevum. Just like Magnus destroyed my mother.

Never tell a computer to forget it.

She studied my face for a long minute. “Are you going to help my mom?” It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren’t that simple, that some...

Our world must be hell, then. It must be the hell of some other place where all of us committed atrocious sins of some sort, and now we’re stuck here until we die and either...

I have 9022 gods listed in my database. Must I thank all of them?

illustration Speaking before the Marion Hobby Club Marion, OH 2013 This writer is looking for an agent.An old adage warns: If you don’t know your history, you will be forever condemned to repeat it. Likewise,...

Perhaps the god who had made the Cat People intended them as a joke. They had schools, but no education; politicians but no government; people, but no personal integrity; faces, but no concept of face....

I don’t want to be a machine, and I don’t want to think about war,” EPICAC had written after Pat’s and my lighthearted departure. “I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever...

Sighing, he settled into his chair, watching the vision of space at his front. It was stoic, calm, and never ending—deadly, if you weren’t careful.

Rachel Henson stood facing him, immaculate in her uniform and ready for duty as always. She looked as though she had spent her whole life preparing for this very moment – she always did.

When you read my stories, I want you to see the world through my eyes; as if I based my work on you. Come away with me, and I’ll show you a world that you’ve...

We’re not freaks, Tally. We’re normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we’re not hyped-up Barbie dolls.

January took a breath, realizing it had been a cause from her holding it in, trying to work through the puzzle she faced. If he’s a Ghost, why was she sent on a mission to...

The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all...

Nothing could go wrong because nothing had…I meant “nothing would.” No – Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add...

One of the liberating effects of science fiction when I was a teenager was precisely its ability to tune me into all sorts of strange data and make me realize that I wasn’t as totally...

By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the...

Tomorrow morning, he decided, I’ll begin clearing away the sand of fifty thousand centuries for my first vegetable garden. That’s the initial step.

There’s a sameness to streetlife. On every world I’ve ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from whatever clanking...

…They are merely scars, not mortal wounds and you must use them to propel you forward.

One day I found him amid large packages from which spilled attractive, glossy paperbacks with mythical covers. He had tried to use, as a “generator of ideas” — for we were running out of them...

Please, please I don’t want my soul tethered to the Net, my mind impregnated by the Data Stream, or my body enslaved by the Grid. I am a Homo Sapiens, dammit, and I can be...

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible

I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid I’ll never get a chance to live!

To be in a war, you must learn the rules of survival… to win a war, you must break every fucking one of those rules.

I sort of liked the sound of bones breaking. It was like home.

Inevitably, his vision verged toward the fantastic; he published a scattering of stories – most included in this volume – which appeared to conform to that genre at least to the degree that the fuller...

The red was something none of them could contain.

What will we be doing, when everything that can be done, can be done better by robots?

I saw the Earth, yes. I saw the colors so magnificent, so vivid, so real. It was hope so large and round, green and blue.

Fuck, if only ‘aesthetic idiom’ didn’t sound so damn poncy.

And strange were the tales of the pond in the meadow,And eager we listened with eyes opened wideTo Those tales often told by poor Mary the widow,Who lived in a cottage the meadow beside.Play not,...

If we accept the premise that we’re always wrong, it really removes the incentive to spend a lot of time trying to make good guesses because even the good guesses turn out to be wrong....

You know, like that old Catch 42 expression that stands for the meaning of life is that in the end you always get screwed.

The moon shines like a freshly unwrapped cheese ball at the holidays.”-William Harrison in Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project

So I’m alone. I have no one. Is that what you’re telling me?” – Junco, Range (to be published April 2013)

Deep in the recesses of her mind, she knew they were probably watching. They watched everything, after all.Let them watch. Let them see what it meant to be human. To live.Let them see what it...

His eyes burned with intensity. I wondered briefly if someonehe knew was being held in that cold room that smelled like death. Someone he loved?

Open up your Mind Rockin’ Minds to the Cold Hard Reality that is my Songs & Dreams.

I would like [my readers] to better understand human beings and human life as a result of having read [my] stories. I’d like them to feel that this was an experience that made things better...

The best time to plan a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is now.

I was his heartbeat. I was his fucking universe. Now I was, but soon I wouldn’t be. I would miss that, miss being important. I would miss having someone.

Time keeps ticking away, unaware of the suffering each second generates. Time doesn’t care, because if it did, it would’ve reversed.

Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America’s like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.

What had she been thinking, suggesting to Alicia, of all people, that a time-travel app was the solution to the problems of women in poverty? ‘Are you talking about my community? You didn’t even think...

A face stared up at her from the mirror beside her hand. Was that really what she looked like? Was that really what she looked like, all sharp lines and huge silver-grey eyes? Certainly, no...

… we have created a man with not one brain but two. … This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. … The patient’s biological brain is the peripheral terminal — the only...