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Biggest influence: my mother.

Charles Stross

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Charles Stross
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: October 18
Pharmacist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Charlie Stross
Biggest
Influence
Mother

More quotes by Charles Stross

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Can I remember I remember lots, I say. How much of what I remember is true is another matter.
Charles Stross
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I have not watched the TV show. I do not generally watch TV sci-fi drama shows. They make me itch.
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 write exclusively using computers. Pens and typewriters can fsck right off - I wrote my first half million words in my teens on a manual typewriter (had to trade it for a new one due to keys snapping from metal fatigue) so I am not a pen or typewriter fetishist.
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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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
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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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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 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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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
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I have a CS degree and a history that includes working as a software developer and being a computer magazine columnist back during the 1990s. I guess I simply paid attention to the social effects of the IT revolution as I lived through it.
Charles Stross
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Personal pride is probably a bad guide to merit.
Charles Stross
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The trouble is, if you go too far towards being polite, the label that applies is doormat.
Charles Stross
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The problem with ebook filesharing is simply one of scale. But I think the piracy problem is massively over-rated.
Charles Stross
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You know, if I tried to change the minds of everyone who I thought needed changing, I'd never have time to do anything else.
Charles Stross
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People want to buy mp3s but can't? Piracy ensues. Then Apple strong-arms the music studios into the iTunes store and music piracy drops somewhat. The same, I believe, is also happening with ebooks.
Charles Stross
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All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night.
Charles Stross
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I've reached an age at which I'd rather pay more for something that just works than roll up my sleeves, reach for a spanner, and make it work. Time is money, and the older we get the less of it we've got left.
Charles Stross
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Any replacement to the current copyright position (life plus 70 years) needs to have an answer lined up for this, and similar, messy edge cases.
Charles Stross
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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