Charles Stross's Blog, page 132

Not dead

Halfway through the redraft of "The Fuller Memorandum" and coming down with a head-cold, hence the silence — I'm low on energy right now and reserving what stamina I've got for shoveling another manuscript into the gaping firebox maw of the publishing industry.

I suppose I ought to say something about the current high political drama here in the UK, or the disgusting and negative outcome of the Euro-elections (hint for non-UK readers: the BNP are basically the UK's resident neo-Nazi party) but if

Marking time

Right now I'm up to my elbows in the guts of "The Fuller Memorandum", doing a final draft (with editorial feedback) and writing the afterword. It's due on my editor's desk at the end of the month, and so takes priority over, er, blogging. When I start posting here frequently again you can probably take it as a sign that I've broken the back of the job.

In other news: given that we're beginning to see in-flight internet access trailed on airliners, how long it is going to be until we get real-time

Next year's books ...

Now that I've got my schedule for next year untangled ...

First up in print in 2010 will be "The Trade of Queens", book #6 in the Merchant Princes series — due out in April, this concludes the current story arc (the one beginning in "The Clan Corporate" and most recently continued in "The Revolution Business"). That'll be a hardcover release from Tor, at around the same time that "The Revolution Business" shows up in paperback (and hopefully in the UK).

There are more stories to tell in that univ

Home again

I'm back home and more than a little jet-lagged: for some reason my regular strategy for kicking myself back onto UK time failed, and my biological clock thinks I'm in Sydney right now.

Things to do when you get home with jet lag: run the washing machine 24x7 until the mountain of dirty underwear goes away, collect the cats from the cat-sitter, stumble to the local grocery for some fresh food, and catch up on your reading.

One of the perks of this job is getting to read next year's SF novels in

Facebook: a reminder

I Do Not Use Facebook. Or MySpace.

I created a facebook account solely to pre-empt identity squatting. I don't use it. Don't friend me there; I will not friend you back. One social network is enough for anyone, and Facebook doesn't fit my requirements.

Holding pattern #2

Yes, I know I ought to be blogging more frequently; but I'm at Balticon right now, being their guest of honour, and it's a wee bit time consuming.

We're flying home on Tuesday, back in our own bed Wednesday, and ought to be over the jetlag by Friday. Until then, posting may be patchy.

Retrograde

On Friday I had occasion to travel by train in the United States. I caught an Amtrak train — the #513 from Seattle to Portland, business class. It was that, or fly (I don't drive in the US), and I'm fed up with security theatre.

You can get beer on that train. In fact, there's a choice of microbrews (as well as the usual horse piss) in the galley.

However ...

I was gobsmacked by how slow and inefficient the process of catching the train in America feels, compared to even the ghastly suboptimization

LOGIN 2009 keynote: gaming in the world of 2030

I've just given one of the keynote speeches at the LOGIN 2009 conference here in Seattle. Here's more or less that I said ... Imagine you're sitting among a well-fed audience of MMO developers and gaming startup managers (no, nobody video'd the talk):

Good morning. I'm Charlie Stross; I write science fiction, and for some reason people think that this means I can predict the future. If only I could: the English national lottery had a record roll-over last week, and if I could predict the future I

In Seattle

I'm in Seattle this week, doing this gig. Flew out on Friday, jet-lagged on Saturday, then 36 hours of tourist stuff culminating in the regular tour of the Boeing Everett factory. If you ever need to recalibrate your sense of scale you can do worse than stand on a viewing gallery with, on your left, an assembly line pumping out Boeing 777s nose-to-tail like SUVs, and on your right, an assembly line gearing up to pump out 787 Dreamliners. (The first 787 test flight is due in the next couple of mo

Site Overhaul

My website is nearly old enough to vote.

I'm not joking; the first version of it went live inside my then-employer's intranet in late 1993. (I've still got it lying around somewhere — must dust it off one of these days.) This version, on antipope.org, has mutated but is largely unchanged since 1996, save for the addition of the blog some time in early 2000.

When your website has acne and hangs around pubs trying to get someone to buy it a pint, it's probably time to think about an overhaul. And s