British science fiction writer (1972- )
I was an accountant ... I rewrote the world through numbers. The world still had the same number of boats and trees and bottles of wine and loaves of bread after I finished my calculations, and yet all of a sudden people found themselves broke, or suddenly rich.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream London
The evening shadows made my home look as if it were dying.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream Paris
It was important not to show any emotion. But I felt hollow, like if you blew across my lips I would sound a note, deep and low.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream Paris
But the robots who lived there kept their metal to themselves, so that the robots who lived in the centre were left to forge bodies out of wind and dust.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Twisted Metal
I learned long ago that a good-looking man in the right suit with a winning smile can get what he wants. All it takes is the ability to tell a story.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream London
CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH. Mmmmm, mmmmm. Crunch crunch crunch.
There was someone in my room, someone crouching at the bottom of the bed eating something. Enjoying it too, by the sound of it.
Mmmmmm, mmmmm. Crunch, crunch.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream London
I paused. It didn't do to let odd thoughts pass by unexamined.... If you wanted to stay sane, then those thoughts had to be examined, checked and classified.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream Paris
Madame Joubert was a woman completely in control, a woman of iron self-discipline. Her long grey hair was pinned up in an elaborate chignon, her slim figure suggested so many meals half-eaten, so many courses where she had taken one mouthful and pushed away her plate.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream Paris
They are running illegal personality constructs. They are collaborating in the torture and murder of said constructs. I think it may be a fair assumption that they are not the sort of people to be trusted when they tell you that your anonymity is assured.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Capacity
We looked each other up and down, checking out how the other looked. She won that battle. Her tailored suit was well made, her dark silk stocking tops visible just beneath her too-short skirt. Her make-up was immaculate: bright red lips and highlighted eyes stood out against her smooth, almost imperceptible foundation. And there I stood in my frayed grey trousers, my leaking black brogues and my gaudy military jacket.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream London
The world was slipping down into Hell, and everyone was helping it on its way. Everyone accepted a little bit of money, and a little bit of blame, and that way they could all walk around with a conscience that was just a little bit off-color. Just a little bit, but add all those bits together ...
TONY BALLANTYNE
Recursion
He had a thin smile, a smile weighed out in ounces; it balanced a favour exactly with no warmth to spare.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream London
The feeling of fear in the stadium was electric: it was a static charge building up in the jolting, clanking crowd of robots, threatening to earth itself in a runaway crackle of panic.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Twisted Metal
The shape of the city changes all the time. A man can go to bed rich with 100 acres and wake up poor with property the area of a postage stamp.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream London
What if that is where we are going wrong? We search for signs of other intelligent life, yet maybe none exists. Maybe there is no other intelligent life. There are other ways of evolving.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Capacity
I began to walk. Not back to my room, but out, instead, out into Dream London. The stars were so heavy that the purple sky bulged in the middle, sagging down to pierce itself on the city spires.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream London
If you weren't here, if you didn't live through the changes, if you didn't experience how the streets moved around at night or how people's personalities were subtly altered, if you didn't see the casual cruelty, the cheapening of human life, the way that easy stereotypes take hold of people... If you weren't there, you're never going to understand what it was like.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream Paris
Humans are cowards; they leave their problems for their children to sort out.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Recursion
You humans ... always looking for a sensei, always handing over responsibility for your actions to a higher power.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Recursion
The sky was the colour of an unpolished euphonium, tuned to a dead key.
TONY BALLANTYNE
Dream Paris