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
reading writing style
Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.
book reading writing
While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.
jobs reading years
I wanted an agent who would actually sell stuff. After two British agents failed comprehensively, I was reading Locus (the SF field's trade journal) and noticed a press release about an experienced editor leaving her job to join an agent in setting up a new agency. And I went "aha!" - because what you need is an agent who knows the industry but who doesn't have a huge list of famous clients whose needs will inevitably be put ahead of you. So I emailed her, and ... well, 11 years later I am the client listed at the top of her masthead!
jobs reading writing
What I read: while I'm writing, I tend to go off reading fiction for relaxation - especially the challenging stuff. It's too much like the day job.
human people turns virtual
It turns out that the killer application for virtual reality is other human beings. Build a world that people want to inhabit, and the inhabitants will come.
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.
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!
areas few narrative novels remaining
Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.
ashes attitude british context engage fearful future less open optimism pessimism quite science since social uk view whereas
The social context of the UK is more open to the future, the old pessimism has been scrubbed and there's a view that you can engage with the future again. There is quite a lot of optimism in British science fiction, much less of the sackcloth and ashes and 'we're all going to die' attitude that it used to have, whereas the Americans have become more entrenched and fearful since 2001.
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.
best effects hatch maybe possibly pubs
Pubs are, disturbingly, where I hatch most of my best idea-sculptures: possibly it's something to do with the disinhibiting effects of alcohol, or maybe it's just having company to yack at.
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.