Charles Stross
Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Strossis an award-winning British writer of science fiction, Lovecraftian horror and fantasy...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth18 October 1964
art ease entirely fiction form genre human ideas literary literature primarily pure rather science tool writers
Many science fiction writers are literary autodidacts who focus on the genre primarily as a literature of ideas rather than as a pure art form or a tool for the introspective examination of the human condition. I'm not entirely at ease with that self-description.
bring broaden condition definition doomed fiction human insight key needs remain science study
I think that if there's one key insight science can bring to fiction, it's that fiction - the study of the human condition - needs to broaden its definition of the human condition. Because the human condition isn't immutable and doomed to remain uniform forever.
best clear fiction itself life merely outcome precisely reader showing suspect
I suspect political fiction is at its best precisely when it doesn't preach, but restricts itself to showing the reader a different way of life or thought, and merely makes it clear that this is an end-point or outcome for some kind of political creed.
fiction flash
I don't do flash fiction.
writing fiction firsts
Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)
adapted aerospace boldly brick fiction hit ill outer profoundly science space until wall
Science fiction was rocket-mad for about 40 years until aerospace hit a brick wall about 1970. I would not write off space colonisation or exploration completely, but we are profoundly ill adapted for going boldly into outer space.
attractive crude explain fiction lived science strong
Science fiction has traditionally been economically naive, with a strong libertarian streak, which I think is like a crude Leninism. That's attractive because it could be used to explain everything, and if only we lived by its tenets, everything would be perfect.
business difficult fiction human humans ignore obsessed rather thus
The business of fiction is the study of the human condition, and gender is something that many humans are obsessed with, thus making it rather difficult to ignore when studying the human condition!
human imagined
Fiction is the study of the human condition under imagined circumstances.
closer compact north relatively
Britain is relatively compact and much closer to the borders of the U.S.S.R. than anywhere in North America.
heads reasonable
I don't do villains often enough. There are two approaches: give them sympathetic, reasonable motivations for doing the most unspeakable things, or get inside heads that are interestingly broken.
conclusion guy historical periods since time
I am a lazy, cynical, middle-aged guy who has long since come to the conclusion that most historical periods really sucked, for most people, most of the time.
low paranormal urban
I have a low taste for urban fantasy and paranormal romance.
became black climbing earliest fairly front hour image kids man morning sat sort suit ungodly watching white
One of my earliest recollections is being woken up at some ungodly hour in the morning by my parents and sat in front of the fairly new black and white television, watching a grainy image of a man in a white suit climbing down a ladder. It was the first moon landing, and I became a sort of spaceman, as many kids were.