Michael Swanwick

Image of Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick

15 Quotations from Michael Swanwick

atmosphere suit n. 2002 M. Swanwick Slow Life in Year’s Best Science Fiction (#20) Lizzie dogged down the lid of the collecting box and began to skip across the granite-hard ice, splashing the puddles and dragging the boot of her atmosphere suit through the rivulets of methane pouring down the mountainside. ‘I'm singing in the rain.’ She threw out her arms and spun around. ‘Just sing-ing in the rain!’
cyberpunk n. 1 2000 M. Swanwick User's Guide to Postmoderns in Moon Dogs 266 Following The Artificial Kid, a now-rare hardcover in which he broke through into (and possibly invented) cyberpunk, he emerged as the suddenly hot writer.
jet pack n. 1984 M. Swanwick Ice Age in Amazing Stories Jan. 138 Flickermotes appeared in the air between the towers. Were they flying cars, Rob wondered, or possibly personal jetpacks?
meat puppet n. 2008 M. Swanwick From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 14 You must remain a meat puppet for the duration of this mission.
mech n. 1999 M. Swanwick Ancient Engines in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 94/1 ‘Planning to live forever, Tiktok?’…‘I believe you’re talking to me?’ a mech said.
posthumanity n. 1997 M. Swanwick The Wisdom of Old Earth in Asimov’s Science Fiction Dec. 107 Now consider posthumanity. Our environment is entirely artificial—floating cities, the Martian subsurface, the Venusian and Jovian bubbles. Such habitats require social integration of a high order. A human could survive within them, possibly, but she would not thrive. Our surround is self-defined, and therefore within it we are the pinnacle of evolution.
sharecropper n. 1999 M. Swanwick in Puck Aleshire's Abecedary (2000) 26 Writers who achieved some fame as sharecroppers but never produced any work of their own include Isaac Asimov…and Roger Zelazny.
sharecropping n. 1999 M. Swanwick in Puck Aleshire's Abecedary (2000) 26 CAS wrote no more than three dozen tales himself. So popular did they prove, however, and so great was the public’s appetite for more, that other writers were hired to continue the franchise. This early version of sharecropping was so successful that the series has continued to this very day.
starport n. 2011 M. Swanwick For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I’ll not Be Back Again in Asimov’s Science Fiction Aug. 61 I was standing in Shannon Starport, when Homeworld Security closed in on me.
teleporter n. 2 2003 M. Swanwick Legions in Time in Asimov’s Science Fiction Apr. 76 Something that a day ago she would have sworn couldn’t exist. A teleporter, perhaps, or a time machine.
terraformer n. 2003 M. Swanwick Archaic Planets: Nine Excerpts from Encyclopedia Galactica in Cigar-Box Faust and other miniatures 73 During their absence, the terraformers had transformed a hundred and twenty worlds into virtual Edens.
visiplate n. 2003 M. Swanwick Legions in Time in Asimov’s Science Fiction Apr. 83 Ellie shrieked, and threw her purse over the visi-plate. ‘Don’t listen to him!’ she ordered Nadine. ‘See if you can find a way of turning this thing off!’
visiscreen n. 2003 M. Swanwick Legions in Time in Asimov’s Science Fiction Apr. 86 Then everyone was on his or her feet, all facing the visi-screen, all raising clenched fists in response to the salute, and all chanting as one, ‘We are nothing! The Rationality is all!
wetware n. 1987 M. Swanwick Vacuum Flowers in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 180 My family wanted to send me to the University of Faraway, for a degree in the mind arts, but I wanted to get into wetware design.
xenopsychology n. 2008 M. Swanwick From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled… in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 13 I filed it under Architecture, subheading: Support Systems with links to Esthetics and Xenopsychology.