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
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.
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.
editor exposed fear front humorous pieces stage standing
Luckily, I'm not a stand-up comedian, so I don't get the fear of standing on stage in front of a dead audience: my humorous pieces have to make it past an editor before they get exposed to the public.
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.
decide line months next nine pay people productive six turning weed work
The real challenge in this line of work is being able to weed the productive ones from the chaff, to decide which you're going to spend the next six to nine months turning into something that people will pay for.
bit future openness upbeat
We're a bit more upbeat and there's an openness about there being a future for us,
foreground humour matching principle response tend work
I tend to work on the principle that much humour relies on cognitive dissonance - on the foreground not matching the background, on the protagonist's response to a situation being inappropriate, and so on.
children computer exploring human information interested
I write more for the children of the computer revolution, who are also interested in speculation and exploring the human condition, but approach it from an information perspective.
good keeping news remember talk trying walking week
I was walking around for a week or so trying to remember not to talk about it. And, you know, keeping good news to yourself isn't always easy.