Brass Man Quotes

“Try to think like a human,’ said Gant, lolling in one of the club chairs.
‘Why should I restrict myself so severely?”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“It seemed that, after contact with a few human generations, sand hogs would begin to understand human speech. The irony was that after coming to understand their riders fully, the beasts often ended up abandoning them and heading off into the wilderness.”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“The use of holographic projection of avatars, virtual consoles, and just about anything up to an entire virtuality, the use of linkages both through the optic nerve and directly into the visual cortex from augs and gridlinks, and the manipulation of telefactors via VR are just a few examples of how the virtual world and the real world are melding. At one time the limit of virtual reality was self-gratification in the form of games (some of them distinctly sticky), but that time was short indeed as the potential of VR was swiftly realized. Now, people (human, haiman and AI) operate in both worlds with ease and familiar contempt. Very infrequently is there any confusion: we have all learned that even the avatar in the shape of a fire-breathing dragon we must treat as real. The two worlds, real and supposedly unreal, influence and interact with each other, and virtual teeth can still bite.”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“Also establishing themselves as corporate entities, they soon accrued vast wealth with which to employ human mercenary armies. National leaders in the solar system, ordering this launch or that attack, found their orders either just did not arrive, or caused nil response. Those same people, ordering the destruction of the AIs, found themselves weaponless, in environments utterly out of their control, and up against superior forces and, on the whole, public opinion. It had not taken the general population, for whom it was a long-established tradition to look upon their human leaders with contempt, very long to realize that the AIs were better at running everything. And it is very difficult to motivate people to revolution when they are extremely comfortable and well off.”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“To dispense with these hatreds, we need not to want them. Unfortunately, people cherish their bigotry, misanthropy and animosities, and they don them like well-worn and well-loved clothes.”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“Sins of the father: It was long accepted in the twenty-first century that an abused child might well grow into an abuser, and in that liberal age evidence of childhood abuse was looked upon as an excuse for later crimes. This was, remember, the time when many considered poverty sufficient excuse for criminality – a huge insult to those poor people who were not and would never become criminals. The liberals of that age were soft and deluded, and had yet to reap what they had sown in the form of ever escalating levels of crime. Their view of existence was deterministic, and if taken to its logical conclusion would have resulted in no human being responsible for anything, and the denial of free will (which as it happens was their political aim). Luckily, a more realistic approach prevailed, as those in power came to understand, quite simply, that removal of responsibility from people made them more irresponsible. However, this is not to deny the basic premise that our parents create and form us, though, knowing this, we have the power to change what we are. In the end, there are no excuses. And so it is with AI: we humans are the parents, and they are the abused children grown to adulthood.”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“Having human DNA should not immediately grant an individual inalienable rights. Rights, it was decided, and equivalent responsibilities, should be given to ‘citizens’, and only those above a certain level of intelligence could become citizens. Protests did result when some humans failed to qualify, whilst all AIs and some particularly bright pigs did,”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“Cormac studied one of the portraits, vaguely identifying it as of some very early premillennial cosmonaut,”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man

“It is very difficult to motivate people to revolution when they are extremely comfortable and well off.”
― Neal Asher, Brass Man