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Charles Stross

charles stross

Charles Stross Explains Why Science is Integral to Fiction

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 »

posthumans

Posthumans, Rise Up And Destroy Hollywood!

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 »

space cocktails

Soak Your Head With The Greatest Cocktails From Science Fiction

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 »

Best Novels Of 2007 Include Alternate Present And Near Future Stories 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]

tiptree awards

Sarah Hall's Dystopian Fable Wins The Tiptree Award

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 »

Hugo Nominees Available As E-Books (For Judges Only) 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]

sf politics

Charles Stross Talks to io9 About Sex, Prison, and Politics

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 »

Hear Stross' Drunken Sex Robot Odyssey "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]

SF Authors Tag-Team On Blog 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]