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Some people's futures are determined by popular vote: American Idol contestants, class presidents, and people who want to get gay married in California. But what if every aspect of our lives was determined by our reputation and popularity? Would our futures be better, or would the tyranny of the popular spin us into dystopia? More »
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Author Charles Stross has given the world many a flight of futuristic fancy — post-human worlds where androids carry on our legacy, bank robberies committed inside online games, and god-like meddlers — but what does he think the world will really be like in the next 20 years? More »
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Science fiction and fantasy books are bigger than ever. A Dance With Dragons and Stephen King's time-travel saga rule the bestseller lists. Literary authors all flock to write about zombies, apocalypses and time travel. And by all indications, 2012 is going to be an even greater year for genre books. More »
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Charles Stross' new novel, Rule 34, is a near future tale that is nominally a detective story set in the same world as his hit book Halting State. But in fact it's not so much a mystery as it is a sneakily Utopian vision of a world recovering from complete financial collapse — and giving birth to an unexpected form of life in the process. More »
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If you've been hoping Charles Stross would return to the diverse territories of his Laundry series, Saturn's Children or Halting State, then you'll be excited by his next few novels. More »
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A while back, Charles Stross published a spirited critique of steampunk, saying "there's too much of it" and it's suffering from "second artist effect." Now Aurorarama author Jean-Christophe Valtat explains why steampunk and "Teslapop" are more relevant than ever. More »
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It isn't every day that a brand-new author lands a three-book, five-figure book deal on the back of a single chapter. SciFiNow's Sam Bandah talks to Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi about how it happened. More »
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Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross have just signed with Tor Books to co-author a fix-up novel based on a series of short stories called Rapture of the Nerds. The authors and their editor told us what to expect. More »
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It doesn't really matter to our dimension the British Empire never existed in another reality. At least it doesn't until somebody from one of those timelines comes to visit. This week we explore portals to other universes. More »
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Can't wait for scarcity to end, and the Bitchun Society to begin? Us neither. That's why we're glad visionary writer R.U. Sirius has compiled his list of five positive science fiction novels to pass the time until the Singularity. [H-Plus] More »
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There's only one thing Hollywood loves than a movie based on a toy: remakes. Dozens of science-fiction classics are slated for do-overs. But instead of remaking films that were fine the first time, here are 20 books Hollywood should film. More »
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Science-fiction books from Tor are back for sale on Amazon.com, after a few days when the online bookseller tried to pull all titles from Tor's parent company, Macmillan. At issue: how much Amazon can fix prices for e-book editions. More »
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Is our planet actually inhabitable to humans? Most of us would answer yes, but the answer's a lot more complicated, writes Charles Stross. And those complications have dire implications for our hopes of colonizing other worlds. More »
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Science fiction author Charles Stross hates Star Trek. He also hates Babylon 5 and can't be bothered with Doctor Who. Why? Because in so much science fiction television, the technology portrayed is so often irrelevant to the story being told. More »
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Last night, the 2009 Hugo Awards Ceremony brought together many of the genre's leading lights, and we were there. A few victories surprised us, and a couple of speeches moved us. Here's our gallery of the parties and the glamor. More »
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This month, spend some time in Victorian steampunk England, hunt down lost artifacts on Mars, or get to know Batman a little better. You could also grab a drink in post-apocalyptic Wales. All that and more, in July books. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5312086&view=rss&microfeed=true BSC Review has a great roundtable discussion about science fiction that influenced people's childhoods, including contributions from authors Charles Stross, Ken Scholes and Ian R. MacLeod. (Stross' influences are pretty much what you'd expect, including Arthur C. Clarke — although he was apparently a fiend for E.E. "Doc" Smith.) And then Star Trek/Fifth Element actor Sonita Henry confesses her deep love for Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. Oh, and Ian MacLeod explains how he watched the very first Doctor Who episode and wrote a letter to the BBC telling them it should run forever. [BSC Review] More »
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As soon as we have convincing(ish) androids and gynoids, we'll create pleasure-droids. And soon after that, those sex-machines will use their super-powerful thigh muscles to try and kill us. Here are 15 examples of the sexy robot death that awaits you in the future. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5262182&view=rss&microfeed=true Charles Stross weighs in the whole online controversy over George R.R. Martin taking his time to finish the "Game Of Thrones" series, and he has some useful perspective. Stross, whose "Merchant Princes" series is long and sprawling in its own right, explains that there are actually two kinds of multi-book series, and why "Game Of Thrones" is the harder kind. (And he explains why you should beware the problem of the spear-carrier who sneakily becomes a protagonist!) [Charlie's Diary] More »
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Britain's prestigious Arthur C. Clarke awards took the unusual step of announcing a "longlist" of 46 books published in 2008 that are seriously in the running. And the biggest surprise, according to the Guardian, is the inclusion of weird literary author Paul Auster, whose new novel Man In The Dark takes place in an alternate United States plagued by civil war. More »
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Are we finally going to get a posthuman mass culture? With movies like Surrogates and Avatar hitting theaters later this year, it may be now or never. More »
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If you didn't already worship visionary writer Charles Stross, a new virtual seminar on his works by a group of luminaries and amazing writers will convert you. Among the highlights: Paul Krugman on transdimensional economics. More »
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Looking to do the deed with that hot alien, demon, or super-assassin, but not sure about the risks? We list scifi's deadliest sexual encounters to ensure that your next orgasm won't be your last. More »
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The final episodes of Battlestar Galactica promise to reveal everything about the Cylon religion. But those toasters didn't invent robo-faith — here's a list of all the religions which robots have founded over the years. More »
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Science fiction authors give too much credit to nanotech, which hasn't achieved all that much in real life (besides giving us pretty pictures) so far. But science fiction authors claim it can do everything, from destroying the world to turning you into a superhuman. Complains Santa Cruz SF writer Christopher Bradley: More »
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How can you predict future technologies? You can't, according to five great science fiction authors quoted in the new CIO Magazine. But at least you can predict what types of problems will crop up. More »
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Newly Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman was inspired to become an economist by reading science fiction, as Patrick Nielsen Hayden over at Tor.com reminds us. Krugman says he read Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and wanted to become a psychohistorian — a career that sadly doesn't exist yet. Instead, Krugman wrote a ground-breaking paper on the economics of interstellar trade. What's Krugman going to do with his newfound prestige? Give a seminar on the works of science fiction author Charles Stross, to be posted on CrookedTimber this month. [Tor.com] More »
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There's no question we're living in unpredictable times. With rapid advances in technology, ever-shifting governments and national borders, and unforeseen natural, political, and economic disasters, it is getting more and more difficult for people to make stable plans for the next few years. And, as novelist Charles Stross (Saturn's Children) points out, it's a challenge not only for those looking to plan their actual futures, but also for those attempting to plot out the future in fiction. More »
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I recently cornered scifi writer Charles Stross because I had a lot of burning questions after reading his most recent novel Saturn's Children, about a sexbot who becomes a smuggler. But after a bit of cursory bonding over our love of internet porn, and a few excellent tales about his previous life working at a Scottish ISP where one of his jobs was preventing a cat from peeing on the modems that delivered the internet to all of Scotland, we wound up having a very interesting conversation that I was not expecting. It was about why science fiction created in the U.S. is so dystopian right now, while UK scifi is practically giddy about the future. More »
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One of the charmingly weird things about Charles Stross' new novel Saturn's Children is that he manages to include every single cliche of sexual perversion you've seen on the net — and make them somehow fit plausibly into the plot. The author of the critically-acclaimed Halting State has written a fast-paced thriller about Freya, a sexbot designed to service humans, who lives in a solar system where humans died out 300 years before. A freak among bots, she's programmed to look like and lust after something that doesn't exist. Her life is meaningless and depressing until she takes a job smuggling black market "pink goo" (human cells) for a shady bot named Jeeves. There's a lot to enjoy (and mull over) in this often-satirical novel, and one of the most interesting parts is that Freya comes from a line of "Rhea model" sexbots who share memories and lovers — just like the beautiful cylons in Battlestar Galatica do. More »
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Yesterday the UK Guardian ran a great article on Charles Stross, author of Halting State and Glasshouse (along with a zillion other amazing novels). Stross talks a lot about how difficult it is to predict just how strange the future will be, and charmingly refers to the idea of the singularity as "having a lot of cruft on it." But the best part is when he says that any piece of writing that struggles to come to terms with the human condition as we know it must include science. More »
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Why is Hollywood trying to poison everybody against posthumans? Whenever you see someone going beyond standard-issue humanity in movies or TV, it's portrayed as monstrous and evil. Whether it's cyborgs, mutants or humans hacking their bodies, Hollywood exercises its anti-posthuman agenda. Meanwhile, novels have been celebrating the customizers and reinventers for years now. What can we do to derail Hollywood's insidious campaign against our posthuman brothers and sisters? The first step is understanding where it comes from. More »
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After a long week of conquering the stars — which may seem like decades to a stationary observer — you deserve a stiff drink. Luckily, science fiction has a huge selection of bizarre cocktails, from the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster to the Flaming Rum Monkey. Sure, some of them may be poisonous to humans, but that's just part of the fun. Here's our round-up of the awesomest cocktails from SF. Just make sure to strap your drinks tray down, and away we go. More »
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You've chosen the winners of this year's Locus Awards for science fiction novels, stories, novellas, story collections, first novels and a few other categories. Locus has announced the finalists — including Charles Stross' Halting State, Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union, Ian McDonald's Brasyl, William Gibson's Spook Country and Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine, for best novel — and the actual winners will be announced June 21 in Seattle. Image from Halting State's UK cover. [Locus, via SF Awards Watch] More »
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Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army, the future dystopian novel I reviewed a while back, has won this year's James Tiptree Jr. Award. I was lucky enough to be on the jury for the Tiptree, which recognizes science fiction and fantasy stories that consider gender in a new and interesting way, and we were all blown away by the grim future world and realistic female characters in Carhullan, which is being released in the U.S. as Daughters of the North. The Tiptree honors list also managed to expand boundaries by including a young-adult novel and a graphic novel series. More »
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Four out of five Hugo-nominated novels are available for free, in electronic format — but only if you're a Hugo voter. To receive copies of Halting State by Charles Stross, Brasyl by Ian McDonald, Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer and The Last Colony by John Scalzi, you have to send an email to hugo2008@scalzi.com with proof that you're registered for Denvention, the 2008 WorldCon. Too bad only Hugo voters get to read these books electronically, since even non-attendees might want to weigh in about them online. Also too bad that Harper Collins chose not to include Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union in the care package, although an excerpt is online here. Sadly, the omission may put Chabon at a bit of a disadvantage with the Hugo voters. [Whatever] More »
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Yesterday we talked to Jim Munroe about one of the most political science fiction novels written in the last century, and today we've cornered science fiction author Charles Stross into talking about the future of a more socio-political issue: sex. Stross is the author most recently of Halting State, a near-future MMO crime thriller, as well as gender-bending prison experiment novel Glasshouse, extropian revolutionary war novel Singularity Sky, and many others. His novels are often political in the "rulers fighting" sense as well as in the personal sense — his characters are at odds with themselves, trying to figure things out like love and sexual identity while also shooting big guns and playing with nanotech. So here's what Stross talks about when he talks about sex (and politics). More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=342235&view=rss&microfeed=true "I want you to know, darling, that I'm leaving you for another sex robot, and she's twice the man you'll ever be." That's the first line of Charles Stross' novella "Trunk and Disorderly," which just went online as an audio book at Subterranean Press. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, it's a silly P.G. Wodehouse-esque spoof about a drunken socialite who blunders around with his butler and his sister's miniature elephant. He barely manages to survive a coup attempt disguised as a wild party. [Subterranean Press] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=337940&view=rss&microfeed=true A science fiction group blog at SFNovelists.com includes stars like Charles Stross, Tanya Huff, Kate Elliott, Sean Williams, Tobias Buckell, Karen Miller and Karin Lowachee. [OrbitBooks] More »
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