The Rapture of the Nerds Quotes

“Helpfiles are traditionally outnumbered by no-help files, which superficially resemble a helpfile in form but not in content because they don't actually tell you anything you don't already know, or they answer every question except the one you're asking, or you open them and a giant animated paper clip leaps out and cheerfully asks where you want to go today. And wikis are worse.”
― Charles Stross Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“What you’ve got to understand, son,” says the doctor, “is it’s all the fault of the alien space bats.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“We are medium-sized mammals who only prosper because we've developed a half-arsed ability to terraform the less suitable bits of the planet we evolved on, and we're conscious of our inevitable decay and death, and we can't live anywhere else. There is no invisible sky daddy to give us immortal life and a harp and wings when we die.”
― Charles Stross Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“These days, tales of what Facebook did with its users during the singularity are commonly used to scare naughty children in Wales.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“Give humanity a truly unlimited field, and it would fill it with Happy Meal toys and holographic sports-star, collectible trading card game art.”
― Charles Stross Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“Giant letters march across the dome of the sky: HOME NOT FOUND. Huw, who knows Comic Sans when she sees it, winces in mild disgust.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“Here’s a free tip,” his father says: “The feds aren’t terribly impressed by infantile egoism. In fact, if Objectivism were at the center of human philosophical discourse rather than the fringes, we wouldn’t be here—the Big Zap would have arrived decades ago. But I’m going to be generous and let you write down the ghost of Ayn Rand as a brain fart. I won’t bring her up again if you don’t.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“You're awfully sure of yourself, aren't you? But ask yourself this: How can you know that you didn't spring up fully formed, all of these little convictions stamped upon you? Or, even if your little origin myth is true, how do you know you weren't tampered with? Maybe someone forked you and then intentionally changed your parameters to make you believe what you do. Don't you think it's awfully convenient that there was a totally unsuspected corner of my identity that was willing to chuck out a lifetime of refusal and revulsion in favor of a full-throated embrace of the glories of disembodied life?”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“There are rumors about the depraved and perverted practices of the pulchritudinous protestant puritan plutocratic penis-people priesthood, of shadowy bacchanalian polyamorous practices. ... I suspect, to be blunt, someone was blackmailing him.”
― Charles Stross, The Rapture of the Nerds

“Huw backs away. She might actually be a communicant, he realizes in absolute horror. She might actually have a Facebook account! She’s mad enough... These days, tales of what Facebook did with its users during the singularity are commonly used to scare naughty children in Wales.”
― Cory Doctorow, Rapture of the Nerds: A tale of the singularity, posthumanity, and awkward social situations

“Facebook-Goldman-AOL welcomes you to the United States of America. You have 14,023 new friend requests, which you will receive after this message from our sponsors. Your hen wants milking, your goat has been turned into a zombie, there are 14,278,123 new status updates, and you have been defriended 1,974,231 times. There are 5,348,011 updates to the privacy policy for your review.”
― Cory Doctorow, Rapture of the Nerds: A tale of the singularity, posthumanity, and awkward social situations

“Then he notices, he’s a he again. Why not. Gender is just a slider.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“But she’s experiencing as much rage as the platform on which her consciousness is being modeled, or simulated she thinks darkly, is allowing her to undergo. She’s sure she should be a lot angrier. … There is some unknowable number of her running on some substrate or another and the one that is most compliant will be chosen as the best her, to be carried forward to the next leg of this awful, brutal adventure, while the rest are snuffed out, overwritten, killed or at best archived. This should make her madder. It doesn’t. That fact that it doesn’t make her madder, also should make her madder. It doesn’t. And this should make her so bloody mad that she spontaneously combusts. It doesn’t. …
The only perameret she cares about, how angry can she get, has already been established: not enough, and she os not going to play along.
[Imagine a narrator depicting a Hue vociferously, as well as hopping mad and defiant] “Look, I already know I am not the most pliant instant of me youre runnin. I can’t be. So up yours. I’m dead al;ready. I was dead wehen my viscious scorpion of a motgherchopped the top of my head off and schooped out my brains! … some\wher you found the shapeliest version of me that could be plausibly that could be said to have any continuity with my identity and that one is going to survivv. So fine, I’m dead. Kill me already. I don’t care anymore.”
“Actrually, you’re the best candidate instance presently running.”
It takes Hugh a long moment to work this all out.
“You mean that the other ones are more obstreperous than me? … Unbelievable. What did the rest do?”
“Of the 2% that did not [self conbust], the preponderance are catatonic.”
Catatonic. She sniffs. How unimaginative. She can do better.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“But she’s experiencing as much rage as the platform on which her consciousness is being modeled, or simulated she thinks darkly, is allowing her to undergo. She’s sure she should be a lot angrier. … There is some unknowable number of her running on some substrate or another and the one that is most compliant will be chosen as the best her, to be carried forward to the next leg of this awful, brutal adventure, while the rest are snuffed out, overwritten, killed or at best archived. This should make her madder. It doesn’t. That fact that it doesn’t make her madder, also should make her madder. It doesn’t. And this should make her so bloody mad that she spontaneously combusts. It doesn’t.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“Hugh bites her tough as her guts try to turn to jelly and try to evacuate of their own accord except the flush of stimulated stress hormones trips some sort of built-in override,and the panic attack cuts off sharply before it can really get going. Which is a good thing because not only would it be deeply embarrassing to s@#$ herself out here in the open, she’s not sure she has any apparatus with which to do the defecation thing. For all she knows, she might fart rainbows or anodized multi-hue polyhedral dice.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds

“the noise gets louder, if anything, then modulates to chickens drowning in their own blood with a side order of Van Halen guitar riffs.”
― Cory Doctorow, The Rapture of the Nerds