Mastering the blend of science fiction

 

“Novelsare one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one persondoes almost all of the creative heavy lifting.”– Charles Stross
Bornin Britain on this date in 1964, Stross is an award-winning science fiction writer of nearly three dozen books and numerous short stories.  He also writes freelance pieces aboutcomputer science and science in general – his two college degree specialties.  
While his first published short story,"The Boys,” came out in 1987, it wasn't widely read until it became part of his firstsuccessful short story collection in 2002.   Since then, several collections of his shortstories have been nominated for both Hugo and Nebula Awards.   His first novel, SingularitySky, was published in 2003 and went right to the top of bestseller lists, ultimately earning a nomination for Science Fiction’s top award, The Hugo.  
“I think,” Stross mused,  “that if there's one key insight science canbring to fiction, it's that fiction - the study of the human condition - needsto broaden its definition of the human condition.  Because the human condition isn't immutableand doomed to remain uniform forever.”