Robin Sloan Quotes

Neel cuts in: "Where'd you grow up?"
"Palo Alto," she says. From there to Stanford to Google: for a girl obsessed with the outer limits of human potential, Kat has stayed pretty close to home.
Neel nods knowingly. "The suburban mind cannot comprehend the emergent complexity of a New York sidewalk."
"I don't know about that," Kat says, narrowing her eyes. "I'm pretty good with complexity."
"See, I know what you're thinking," Neel says, shaking his head.
"You're thinking it's just an agent-based simulation, and everybody out here follows a pretty simple set of rules"-- Kat is nodding--"and if you can figure out those rules, you can model it. You can simulate the street, then the neighborhood, then the whole city. Right?"
"Exactly. I mean, sure, I don't know what the rules are yet, but I could experiment and figure them out, and then it would be trivial--"
"Wrong," Neel says, honking like a game-show buzzer. "You can't do it. Even if you know the rules-- and by the way, there are no rules--but even if there were, you can't model it. You know why?"

My best friend and my girlfriend are sparring over simulations. I can only sit back and listen.

Kat frowns. "Why?"
"You don't have enough memory."
"Oh, come on--"
"Nope. You could never hold it all in memory. No computer's big enough. Not even your what's-it-called--"
"The Big Box."
"That's the one. It's not big enough. This box--" Neel stretches out h

To be honest, my life has exhibited many strange and sometimes troubling characteristics, but shortness is not one of them. It feels like an eternity since I started school and a techno-social epoch since I moved to San Francisco. My phone couldn't even connect to the internet back then.

Thank you, Teobaldo. You are my greatest friend. This has been the key to everything.

The buzz about Google these days is that it's like America itself: still the biggest game in town, but inevitably and irrevocably on the decline. Both are superpowers with unmatched resources, but both are faced with fast-growing rivals, and both will eventually be eclipsed. For America, that rival is China. For Google, it's Facebook. (This is all from tech-gossip blogs, so take it with a grain of salt. They also say a startup called MonkeyMoney is going to be huge next year.) But here's the difference: staring down the inevitable, America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever they want.

A fellowship of secret scholars spent five hundred years on this task. Now we're penciling it in for a Friday morning.

I felt the disorientation of a generous offer that in no way lines up with anything you want to do: like a promotion to senior alligator wrestling, or an all-expenses paid trip to Gary, Indiana.

Turning the pages of this encoded codex, I realize that the books I love most are like open cities, with all sorts of ways to wander in. This thing is a fortress with no front gate. You're meant to scale the walls, stone by stone.

I walk alone in the darkness and wonder how a person would begin to determine the circumference of the earth. I have no idea. I'd probably just google it.

The smell!" Penumbra repeats. "You know you are finished when people start talking about the smell.

How do I know that? Does my brain have an app for that?

Its circumference was tiny, but he had a life, and he would not give it up.

But it will make mistakes," she says. "Hadoop will probably get us from a hundred thousand buildings down to, like, five thousand."
"So we're down to five days instead of five years."
"Wrong!" Kat says. "Because guess what
we have ten thousand friends. It's called"
she clicks a tab triumphantly and fat yellow letters appear on the screen
"Mechanical Turk. Instead of sending jobs to computers, like Hadoop, it sends jobs to real people. Lots of them. Mostly Estonians."
She commands King Hadoop and ten thousand Estonian footmen. She is unstoppable.

The thinnest tendrils of dawn are creeping in from the east. People in New York are softly starting to tweet.

Lapin breaks away from Broadway and picks a path toward Telegraph Hill. Her velocity is steady, even as the landscape rises underneath her; she's the little eccentric that could.

I needed a more interesting life.
I could start by learning something.
I could start with the starter.

What do you seek in these shelves?

We were looking at the sequence, not the shape.

I've never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say it's a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes

What if, you know - what if hanging out with Griffo Gerritszoon wasn't always that great? What if he was weird and dreamy? What if the best part of him was the shapes he could make with metal? That part of him really is immortal. It's as immortal as anything's going to get.

Let me be candid. If I had to rank book-acquisition experiences in order of comfort, ease, and satisfaction, the list would go like this: 1. The perfect independent bookstore, like Pygmalion in Berkeley. 2. A big, bright Barnes & Noble. I know they're corporate, but let's face it - those stores are nice. Especially the ones with big couches. 3. The book aisle at Walmart. (It's next to the potting soil.) 4. The lending library aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, a nuclear submarine deep beneath the surface of the Pacific. 5. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.

I can't eat pizza. If we actually end up with a pizza, it's going to be your responsibility to consume it. Do not let me have any. Even if I ask for some." He pauses. "I'll probably ask for some.

We take the subway.Grumble's next message came through after breakfast, and it said:
theres a grumblegear3k waiting for you at 11 jay street in dumbo. ask for the hogwarts special. hold the shrooms.

Maybe his big build isn't a linebacker's after all; maybe it's a librarian's.

It turns out Dungeons & Dragons is much better on paper than it is in reality.

I will admit that I just want an excuse to put all my favorite people in a room together.

I tell him, and I write it down as I go. It makes me feel better, as if the weirdness is flowing out of my blood and onto the page, through the dark point of the pen

Then: I google "time-series visualization" and start work on a new version of my model, thinking that maybe I can impress her with a prototype. I am really into the kind of girl you can impress with a prototype.

This sounds very interesting to me, but mostly because this girl is very interesting to me.

Why do you love books so much?

Maybe I'll just go ahead and buy her the Tufte book. I'll bring it wrapped in brown paper. Wait- is that weird? It's an expensive book. Maybe there's a low-key paperback edition. I could buy it on Amazon. That's stupid, I work at a bookstore. (Could Amazon ship it fast enough?)

I didn't realize wizards were going to walk among us and we'd just call them Googlers.

This girl has the spark of life. This is my primary filter for new friends (girl- and otherwise) and the highest compliment I can pay. I've tried many times to figure out exactly what ignites it
what cocktail of characteristics come together in the cold, dark cosmos to form a star. I know it's mostly in the face
not just the eyes, but the brow, the cheeks, the mouth, and the micromuscles that connect them all.
Kat's micromuscles are very attractive.

Hadoop! I love the sound of it. Kat Potente, you and I will have a son, and we will name him Hadoop, and he will be a great warrior, a king!

Our friendship is a nebula. Now

Of course, of course. Drugs, music, a new age dawning ... and you came for an old book.

Immortality in a book-lined catacomb down beneath the surface of the earth, or death up here, with all this? I'll take death and a kebab.

Lately, even the Waybacklist borrowers seem to be missing. Have they Been seduced by some other book club on the other side of town? Have they all bought Kindles?
I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor! - but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through. My Kindle is a hand-me-down from my dad, one of the original models< ... > There are newer Kindles with bigger screens and subtler industrial design, but this one is like Penumbra's postcards: so uncool it's cool again.

The Golden Horn of Griffo is finely wrought," Zenodotus said, tracing his finger along the curve of Telemach's treasure. "And the magic is in its making alone. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here - none that I can detect.

Your parents are weirdos, in the best possible way. They do not celebrate birthdays; never in your life have you received a present on the tenth of December. Instead, you are given books on the days that their authors were born.

The Con-U storage facility is the most amazing space I have ever seen. Keep in mind that I recently worked at a vertical bookstore and even more recently visited a secret subterranean library. Keep in mind, also, that I saw the Sistine Chapel when I was a kid, and , as part of science camp, I got to visit a particle accelerator. This warehouse has them all beat.

I'm sorry, but I just don't believe in your ... religion,

To tell you the truth, I hate audiobooks.
But an audiobook is like a fizzy knit cap pulled down over your -

Have they all bought Kindles? I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor! - but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through.

I'm going to put the moves on her,' he says gravely. 'Things might get weird.' He says it like a commando setting up a midnight raid. Like: Sure, this is going to be extraordinarily dangerous, but don't worry. I've done it before.

I know I have strong opinions about everything - I can't help it, I do - but this one's the strongest. I waited too long to get out of that office. Much too long. I weep for those years.

Are there sexual fetishes that involve books? There must be. I try not to imagine how they might work.

This is no library. This is the Batcave.

It was a fungal party hellscape.

Lost in the shadows of the shelves, I almost fall off the ladder. I am exactly halfway up. The floor of the bookstore is far below me, the surface of a planet I've left behind.

Neel's model might match the store's volume but never its density

Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines
it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.

I sit up straight and do the first thing a person is supposed to do in an emergency, which is send a text message.

But, of course, the point of a programming language is that you don't just read it; you write it, too. You make it do things for you. And this, I think, is where Ruby shines ( ... )

But down below, Penumbra is shouting, "Lean, my boy! Lean!"
And wow, do I ever want this job.

At Google, they eat lunch on graph paper.

This is not an ordinary bookstore."
"Indeed. It seems more akin to a youth hostel –

Some of them are working hard indeed."
"What are they doing?"
"My boy!" he said, eyebrows raised. As if nothing could be more obvious: "They are reading.

Yes, everyone else is smart, everyone else is cool, everyone else is healthy and attractive - but she brought you.

And even if I fail-this is always the archivist's consolation-perhaps I will have laid a foundation for someone wiser.

Magic is not the only power in this world.

Books: boring. Codes: awesome. These are the people who are running the internet.

But I think the writers had their turn," she says, "and now it's programmers who get to upgrade the human operating system.

The outer perimeter of the facility is like a highway; this must be where all the popular artifacts hang out.

Stuff that used to be hard just isn't hard anymore!

I feel crazy, but in a good way.

Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.

Our books still do not require batteries. But I am no fool. It is a slender advantage.

We need James Bond with a library science degree.

Sometimes, you're stuck with a system too complicated to model completely.

At General Dexterity, I was contributing to an effort to make repetitive labor obsolete. After a trainer in the Task Acquisition Center taught an arm how to do something, all the arms did it perfectly, forever,

In other words, you solved a problem once, and then you moved on to other more interesting things.

Baking, by contrast, was solving the same problem over and over again, because every time, the solution was consumed. I mean, really: chewed and digested.

Thus, the problem was ongoing.

Thus, the problem was perhaps the point.

I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules. On

Moffat's prose is fine: clear and steady, with just enough sweeping statements about destiny and dragons to keep things well inflated. The characters are appealing archetypes: Fernwen the scholarly dwarf is the everynerd, doing his best to live through the adventure. Telemach Half-Blood is the hero you wish you could be. He always has a plan, always has a solution, always has secret allies that he can call upon - pirates and sorcerers whose allegiance he earn with long-ago sacrifices.

It's not like we have the same brains as people a thousand years ago."
Wait: "Yes we do."
"We have the same hardware, but not the same software.

After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.

At Crowley Control Systems in Southfield, the message we received from Clark Crowley, delivered in an amble around the office every month or so, was: Keep up the fine work folks! At General Dexterity in San Francisco, the message we received from Andrei, delivered in a quantitative business update every Tuesday and Thursday, was: We are on a mission to remake the conditions of human labor, so push harder, all of you.

I began to wonder if, in fact, I knew how to push hard. In Michigan, my family all had families and extremely serious hobbies. Here, the wraiths were stripped bare: human-shaped generators of CAD and code.

We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment.

That's what spies do, right? They walk to the bakery and buy a loaf of bread everyday - perfectly normal - until one day they buy a loaf of uranium instead.

Our friendship is a nebula.

You know, I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.

Don't forget your ruler on your first day of cult!

None of this represented the glorious next stage of human evolution, but I was learning things. I was moving up.

All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.

The nature of immortality is a mystery,' he says, speaking so softly that we have to lean closer to hear.' But everything I know of writing and reading tells me that this is true. I have felt it in these shelves and in others.

America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want.

This job has three requirements, each very strict. Do not agree to them lightly. Clerks in this store have followed these rules for nearly a century, and I will not have them broken now. ( ... ) Two: You may not browse, read, or otherwise inspect the shelved volumes. Retrieve them for members. That is all"
( ... )
"You must keep precise records of all transactions. The time. The customer's appearance. His state of mind. How he asks for the book. How he receives it. Does he appear to be injured. Is he wearing a sprig of rosemary on his hat. And so on

He's like a storybook spirit, a little djinn or something, except instead of air or water his element is imagination.

I told them I didn't have time for this bullshit, and if either of them wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it by text message like a normal person.

Corvina must have been so different then ... really literally a different person. At what point do you make that call? At what point should you just give someone a new name? Sorry, no, you don't get to be Corvina anymore. Now you're Corvina 2.0 - a dubious upgrade.

I loved The Chronicles of Narnia. I loved The Chronicles of Prydain. Basically, 'Chronicles of' - I was in!

Programming is not all the same. Normal written languages have different rhythms and idioms, right? Well, so do programming languages. The language called C is all harsh imperatives, almost raw computer-speak. The language called Lisp is like one long, looping sentence, full of subclauses, so long in fact that you usually forget what it was even about in the first place. The language called Erlang is just like it sounds: eccentric and Scandinavian.

She's wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she's a cartoon character - all of which are appealing alternatives.

Then we will do two things," Penumbra says, nodding. "First, I will tell you just a little of our history. Then, to understand, you must see the Reading Room. There, my proposal will become clear, and I dearly hope you will accept it."
Of course we'll accept it. That's what you do on a quest. You listen to the old wizard's problem and then you promise to help him.

Nothing lasts long. We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment - maybe a single pulse of some giant processor somewhere.

This is Mat's secret weapon, his passport, his get-out-of-jail-free card: Mat makes things that are beautiful.

In your message, you told me about your family, how you don't have any traditions. The first time I read that, it made me sad, but then I thought about it for a while and started to feel jealous. Lois, think about it! No one cares if your restaurant has tables. You can build robots, or bake bread, or do something else entirely. You're unencumbered by culture. You're... light!

I wonder if Cheryl realizes how historically significant the contents of this cardboard box are. "Oh, honey," she says, waving her hand, "everything in there is a treasure to somebody.

Penumbra [...] produces another e-reader - it's a Nook. Then another one, a Sony. Another one, marked KOBO. Really? Who has a Kobo?

Kat is talking to someone else now, a slender brown-skinned boy who's joined the line just behind her. He's dressed like a skater, so I assume he has a PhD in artificial intelligence.

I feel a little whirl of dislocation
the trademark sensation of the world being more closely knit together than you expected

Now, for the first time in my life, I empathize 100 percent with Fluff McFly. My heart is beating at hamster-speed and I am throwing my eyes around the room, looking for some way out.