George Alec Effinger

“Did you sleep well last night?” asked Glorian.
“Yes, I suppose,” said Dore, “although I was trouble by a strange dream.”
“Oh? Perhaps it was some sort of omen. Tell me of it.”
“Certainly,” said Dore. “I dreamed of a domino.”
“Just one?”
“Yes, just the one. All night. No people or sounds in the dream, just the domino. The five-three.”
“Wonderful!” cried Glorian. “The five-three is a lucky little devil. It presages victory after hardships. It confirms your inner ambition, but counsels you to avoid extremes, to temper pleasure with practicality. Advances in music, art, and drama are indicated. Rely on good manners and good taste. The five-three is a domino of hope and good news.”
“Are you making that up?” said Dore suspiciously.

Was that what he wanted, what the grand scheme of Utopia 3 was designed for? It was a lot like death, only more tedious.

In many ways, Islam is a beautiful and elegant faith; but it is the nature of religions to put a higher premium on your proper attention to ritual than on your convenience.

You bought the girls drinks and you stared at their perfect bodies and you pretended that they liked you. And they pretended that they liked you, too. When you stopped spending money, they got up and pretended that they liked someone else.

Proper knowledge defeats the shouting minions of emotion.

There are more strains of courage than merely facing a sword.

The only negative thing she had to say was that I displayed a tendency to exaggerate the facts for the sake of interesting reading.

Useful! You want to talk about useful? Have you ever read anything about politics? Economics? You know what keeps a culture alive?
Yes," said Ernest sullenly, while M. Gargotier cleaned up the mess. "People not bothering other people.

“You shouldn’t be so critical,” said Mike the bartender. “Some people like this kind of thing, you know.”
“The kind of person who gets excited over that, I don’t care about,” said Ernest.

With people, Moore suspected, no matter how noble the intent, a defect was unavoidable, a taint of politics.

It didn’t feel, at that moment, like I was getting into something over my head. It never does, before you take the leap.

Let me make it clear: You don’t want his disapproval. He never forgets these things. If he needs to, he hires other people to carry his grudges for him.

The party had demanded this; Weintraub was to be a scapegoat, the local conspirator in the Reichstag tragedy. “I suppose I can’t doubt them,” he thought, as his heart pounded, as his mouth grew dry, as he felt his head become airy and his thoughts giddy. “After all, the Party has the broadest perspective. I don’t have any real sense of this worldwide operation. It’s all for the greater good, I guess. They know what they’re doing.”

Brant felt a spasm of pain. “Uh,” she said. She closed her eyes tight until the pain went away.
“Can I do anything?” said Staefler.
“Yes,” she said. “Have my baby for me.”