The plus sign is a hipster ampersand. - William Gibson

His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it.

"The sun balloons!" cried Grishkin, pointing toward the earth.\nKosmograd was above the coast of California now, clean shorelines, intensely green fields, vast decaying cities whose names rang with a strange magic. High above a fleece of stratocumulus floated five solar balloons, mirrored geodesic spheres tethered by power lines.\n"And they say that people live in those things?"

His nostrils were permanently flared, as though he sniffed invisible winds of art and commerce.