James Nicoll quotes - page 3

In point of fact, the meteor was something like 30 km when it exploded. It was over north Waterloo and I was north of St Agatha. Two spherical clouds, and two explosions. Unfortunately, I was dealing with a goat that was trying to eat an oil truck's fuel line, goats having this optimistic 'Well, maybe it has become edible since they last time I tried this' worldview, and I missed seeing the explosions. (James Nicoll)
It's true that the average human in the Xeelee universe can't eat Jell-O with a straw without accident[al]ly removing an eye but these particular humans start off no stupider than than any other human of their era and proceed to breed themselves into imbecility. Well, farther into imbecility. View quote
James Nicoll
We discovered at one point that the brick wall of the pillar would hold up a sock pretty well. This led to sorting socks by putting them on the wall, which in turn led to mosaics built entirely of socks. Mission drift is a hazard in all pursuits, including doing the laundry. View quote
James Nicoll
Tor is the hard one. They employ a lot of editors, whose tastes vary. They don't always indicate who has edited what (on the choice of the editor, I think) so editor stalking can be more difficult with Tor. Ear-tagging works but is rather surprisingly illegal. View quote
James Nicoll
[H]umans hate to admit error even as they stand there, black and smoldering, with the stub of a cigarette in one hand, in the middle of a wide crater containing them and the remains of a sign that once read 'DANGER: VOLATILE EXPLOSIVES' View quote
James Nicoll
The number of times I have been declared dead is statistically insignificant,although admittedly non-zero. View quote
James Nicoll
The thing about the Star Wars expanded universe that most impresses me is how the need for endless sequels has taken what was way back in the late Disco a fairly upbeat series where the good guys eventually prevailed and turned into a crapsack setting that's grimmer than the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Congo Wars I & II and the Mongol Conquests combined. View quote
James Nicoll
Engineers and certified pilots may be expensive but talented young men with a teenager's grasp of risk are surprisingly affordable. View quote
James Nicoll
I didn't skip the smut. The author went to the trouble of writing it, after all. I did not feel to make notes for possible application later on but I also never wondered if the author was a virgin raised in an abandoned hentai warehouse, which is always a possibility for modern pornographers and erotica writers. View quote
James Nicoll
Atomic war is bad but you know what's even worse? Having had enough atomic wars that you can rank them in terms of horribleness. View quote
James Nicoll
Thoughtful consideration has led me to decide that romance, involving as it does the highly complex interaction of human neurochemisty{sic} with cultural and technological factors, is hard SF. Very hard SF because romance is especially difficult to mentally simulate accurately, not easy-peasy like rocket science. Romance as hard SF may seem counterintuitive, but it's the counterintuitive results of modeling that are often the most interesting outcomes. (James Nicoll)
I wonder if every near-future SF series in which the US is not a brutal theocratic police state ruled by doctrinaire bigoted oligarchs and their boot-licking enablers became obsolete on November 9? Won't it be fun to find out together? View quote
James Nicoll
Niven made a name for himself as a hard SF author, which is to say, someone whose SF provides enough technical detail that the reader can be certain that various mechanisms and events couldn't work the way the author has them working. View quote
James Nicoll
At some point when I wasn't paying attention, comedic genocide just stopped working for me. This is a shame because so much fantasy and SF depends on genocide as positive plot element. This trifling oddity of taste must have robbed me of hours of morally equivocal entertainment. View quote
James Nicoll
It's very difficult to convey how alien and horrifying accounts of how American health care works sound to a Canadian. Seriously, if I didn't know they were real - if, for example, I didn't know an American reviewer who died because she had to choose between paying her mortgage or having a doctor investigate her incapacitating chest pains - it would seem like something from a particularly silly Kornbluth and Pohl Garbageman novel. About the only thing about the US that seems even less believable is the collective enthusiasm for frequent mass murders. View quote
James Nicoll
There are no diplomatic efforts that cannot be successfully undermined by a few bigots in the field. View quote
James Nicoll
The point is that there isn't a canonical James Nicoll tale. The point is that whenever a discussion turns to some manner in which a human being can be menaced, injured, or potentially killed, it will turn out that James has already had it happen to him. No matter how funny, unlikely, wierd (sic)), or pedestrian. He hasn't said he has a scar on his arm from being attacked by aliens with laser swords, but I would be only mildly surprised if he did. And I'd believe him. View quote
James Nicoll