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All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night.

Charles Stross

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Charles Stross
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: October 18
Pharmacist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Charlie Stross
Night
Men
Unthinking
Bottomless
Oceans
Surrounded
Islands
Ocean

More quotes by Charles Stross

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I was an early adopter: have been on the internet continuously since late 1989, barring a six-month loss of access in the early 90s.
Charles Stross
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My favourite movie is: Dr Strangelove. (I haven't seen any films released in the past 2-5 years, I'm afraid: I don't do TV/cinema).
Charles Stross
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Humans: such a brilliant model of emotional self-awareness.
Charles Stross
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Life begets intelligence, intelligence begets smart matter and a singularity.
Charles Stross
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I reckon I can count on 30 more writing years, averaging a book a year (I can't keep up the 2-2.5 a year I used to do these days). And these days I've gotten round to wondering, for each new idea, do I want to be remembered for this? before I get to the point of spending a year on it.
Charles Stross
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My gut feeling is that SF as we know it today is actually a heavily propagandized field that grew out of a specific set of cultural trends running in the USA and Europe between 1918 and 1950, during the post-imperial modernization period.
Charles Stross
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Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again.
Charles Stross
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I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it's appropriate to for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.
Charles Stross
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I drink tea pretty much continuously at a rate of around 1 imperial pint/hour, which sort of enforces screen/keyboard breaks.
Charles Stross
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[Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.]
Charles Stross
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I'm an atheist .I was raised in British reform Judaism, which is not like American reform Judaism, much less any other strain of organised religion. So: no cults here.
Charles Stross
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Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life.
Charles Stross
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Humans are not as unsophisticated as mulch wrigglers, they can see the writing on the wall. Is it any surprise, that among the ones who look outward, the real debate is not over whether to run, but over how far and how fast?
Charles Stross
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A dark-skinned human with four arms walks toward me across the floor of the club, clad only in a belt strung with human skulls.
Charles Stross
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I believe modern SF needs to at least be aware of the singularity, if only so that it can dismiss it intelligently (or work around it). But I suspect the singularity is like faster-than-light travel for the IT generation. We may hope for it, and the rules don't forbid it, but we don't know how to do it yet (and it may not be possible).
Charles Stross
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Had enough of my poetry yet? That's why they pay me to fight demons instead.
Charles Stross
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I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.
Charles Stross
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Personal pride is probably a bad guide to merit.
Charles Stross
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Most established novelists are writing books informed by experiences gained in their youth. Middle age is not the best time to be changing smartphones every six months or adopting new technology platforms - because we tend to get slower and less accommodating to change as we age.
Charles Stross
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I have time to write 1-2 novels per year, and get roughly novel-sized ideas every month. I have to perform triage on my own writing impulses.
Charles Stross