Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Stross
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: October 18
Pharmacist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Charlie Stross
Writing
Technology
Established
Every
Middle
Novelists
Time
Books
Six
Accommodating
Age
Experiences
Slower
Less
Changing
Adopting
Change
Tend
Informed
Best
Youth
Platforms
Book
Months
Gained

More quotes by Charles Stross

Image
Personally, I avoid deus ex machina like the plague - if you have to use one, it means you failed to set up the universe and the plot properly. It's like a whodunnit where there's no actual way for the reader to identify the perpetrator before the climactic reveal: there's no sense of closure for the reader.
Charles Stross
Image
I write almost entlirely on Macs, because: Windows gives me hives.
Charles Stross
Image
The chip that functions abnormally will be desoldered, as they say.
Charles Stross
Image
Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. (Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.)
Charles Stross
Image
[Core concepts: Human beings all have souls. Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal.]
Charles Stross
Image
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
Image
Had enough of my poetry yet? That's why they pay me to fight demons instead.
Charles Stross
Image
--but I find her personality annoying. It's like being molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the i's.
Charles Stross
Image
I do not click on random youtube videos.
Charles Stross
Image
The real world is devoid of narratives, after all. Narratives are just a thing that our brains do with facts in order to draw a line around the incomprehensible largeness of reality and wrestle it into something learnable and manipulable. Existence is devoid of plot, theme, and most of all moral.
Charles Stross
Image
Personal pride is probably a bad guide to merit.
Charles Stross
Image
I have not watched the TV show. I do not generally watch TV sci-fi drama shows. They make me itch.
Charles Stross
Image
The one thing that does happen, every time, though, is that I never get to write a book until I've already been thinking about it for a period of months to years.
Charles Stross
Image
I'm a fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberal, and I think fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberalism is an ideological stance that needs defending-if necessary, with a hob-nailed boot-kick to the bollocks of budding totalitarianism.
Charles Stross
Image
The trouble is, if you go too far towards being polite, the label that applies is doormat.
Charles Stross
Image
Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)
Charles Stross
Image
I don't do football. (Grew up in Leeds in the 1970s. Football there was indellibly associated with the National Front, i.e. violent fascist skinheads.)
Charles Stross
Image
Where would dictators be without our compliant amnesia? Make the collective lose its memory, you can conceal anything.
Charles Stross
Image
I suspect losing paper maps but gaining GPS and online maps is a similar step function: maps still exist, but they're vastly more useful, not to say permanently up to date, in their new form. Again, I won't be shedding any tears, but I'll keep a paper road atlas in the back of my car for another few years, I think, Just In Case.
Charles Stross
Image
For a sampler, you could try my short story collection Wireless. Which contains one novella that scooped a Locus award, and one that won a Hugo, and covers a range of different styles.
Charles Stross