Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

by Peter Watts

There was no comfort in solitude. You couldn’t get it from interactive shadows. You needed someone real at your side, someone to hold on to, someone to share your airspace along with your fear and hope and uncertainty.

We all come into the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we’re all gonna die before it ends.”

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

There’s no such thing as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn’t matter whether a solution’s optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternatives.”