Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

All things have a value. Sometimes the value is paid in coin. Other times, it is paid in time and sweat. And finally, sometimes it is paid in blood. Humanity seems most eager to use this latter currency. And we never note how much of it we’re spending, unless it happens to be our own.

That was how scrivings worked: they were instructions written upon mindless objects that convinced them to disobey reality in select ways.

But the houses were also all competitors who jealously protected their scriving designs; for as everyone knew, intellectual property is the easiest kind to steal.

“The only law in the Commons is might, and success. Those who win are the ones who make the rules.

She felt lonely, and small. Sancia had always been alone. But feeling lonely was different from just being alone.

Life was cheap, and cash, as ever, remained dauntingly expensive.

It never failed to amaze him: you walked exactly one dozen feet, and fell out of one civilization and into another.

He’s just trying to fix the world because it’s the only way he knows to fix himself.>

It was surprising, how fragile your idea of yourself was.

That seemed an appropriate way for him to die, naked and confused and sexually frustrated.

“This is just what people are,” said Sancia. “We’re animals. We only care about survival.”

<Trapped in a casket under the water, with a dead man trapped in a key. How the hell do I get myself into these situations?>

Reality is a stubborn thing.>

Captain Riggo possessed the virtue that Tevanne valued most of all: the ability to ignore what was right in front of his eyes for a huge sum of money.

Pride…it’s so often an excuse for people to be weak.”

“Remember—move thoughtfully, give freedom to others, and you’ll rarely do wrong, Sancia. I’ve learned that now. I wish I’d known it in life.”

Any given innovation that empowers the individual will inevitably come to empower the powerful much, much more.