Posts Tagged ‘Charles Stross’
- Ellen Wright - February 1st, 2012
Locus published their 2011 Recommended Reading List today, and you’ll see a lot of Orbit authors among their choices:
- Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey (US | UK | ANZ)
- Deadline, Mira Grant (US | UK | ANZ)
- Rule 34, Charles Stross (UK | ANZ)
- The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie (US)
- The Dragon’s Path, Daniel Abraham (US | UK | ANZ)
- Heartless, Gail Carriger (US | UK | ANZ)
- The Fallen Blade, Jon Courtenay Grimwood (US | UK | ANZ)
- The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (US | UK | ANZ)
- The Hammer, K.J. Parker (US | UK | ANZ)
And, in case you missed them the first time around, keep reading for a round-up of other Best of 2011 lists!
Read the rest of this entry »
by Ellen Wright • Post a Comment • Posted in: Orbit UK, Orbit US
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One of the major influences on Rule 34 was a throwaway idea I borrowed from Vernor Vinge — that perhaps one of the limiting factors on the survival of technological society is the development of tools of ubiquitous law enforcement, such that all laws can be enforced — or infringements detected — mechanistically.
One of the unacknowledged problems of the 21st century is the explosion in new laws.
We live in a complex society, and complex societies need complex behavioural rules if they’re to run safely. Some of these rules need to be made explicit, because not everyone can be relied on to analyse a situation and do the right thing. To take a trivial example: we now need laws against using a mobile phone or texting while driving, because not everyone realises that this behaviour is dangerous, and earlier iterations of our code for operating vehicles safely were written before we had mobile phones. So the complexity of our legal code grows over time.
The trouble is, it now seems to be growing out of control. Read the rest of this entry »
by Charles Stross •10 Comments • Categories: Guest Post, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK • Tags: Charles Stross, Rule 34
author post
One of the hoariest of science fictional archetypes is the idea of the artificial intelligence — be it the tin man robot servant, or the murderous artificial brain in a box that is HAL 9000. And it’s not hard to see the attraction of AI to the jobbing SF writer. It’s a wonderful tool for exploring ideas about the nature of identity. It’s a great adversary or threat (‘War Games’, ‘The Forbin Project’), it’s a cheap stand-in for alien intelligences — it is the Other of the mind.
The only trouble is, it doesn’t make sense.
Not only is SF as a field full of assumed impossibilities (time machines, faster than light space travel, extraterrestrial intelligences): it’s also crammed with clichés that are superficially plausible but which don’t hang together when you look at them too closely. Take flying cars, for example: yes, we’d all love to have one — right up until we pause to consider what happens when the neighbour’s 16 year old son goes joy riding to impress his girlfriend. Not only is flying fuel-intensive, it’s difficult, and the failure mode is extremely unforgiving. Which is why we don’t have flying cars. (We have flying buses instead, but that’s another matter.) Food pills out-lived their welcome: I think they were an idea that only made sense in the gastronomic wasteland of post-war austerity English cuisine. I submit that AI is a similar pipe dream. Read the rest of this entry »
by Charles Stross •17 Comments • Categories: Guest Post, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK • Tags: Charles Stross
- The Orbit Team - July 7th, 2011
I feel like announcing this with some kind of roar or perhaps a drum roll as I’ve been waiting for this for so long and today is actually LAUNCH DAY! But as we’re open plan and I’m highly unmusical I’ll let this do the job …
Charles Stross’s Rule 34 (UK | ANZ) is many amazing things. It’s a fast-paced Edinburgh-based crime novel set a few years into the future. It also displays lashings of Charles Stross’s wry humour and I enjoyed more than a few winces and chuckle-out-loud moments. Another aspect I really enjoyed was Stross’s extrapolation of our current technology, where our usual gadgets have been moved on a step or three. The BBC’s Click technology programme covered augmented reality just last month, but in Rule 34 it’s a useful, fully-fledged reality.
But perhaps most importantly, I found myself completely caught up in the colourful characters (a detective inspector, a young scalleywag called Anwar and a master criminal showing signs of psychosis known as the Toymaker). There’s not the space here to revel in the bizarre crimes DI Liz Kavanaugh has to investigate (domestic appliances in unlikely places …), or talk about the highly suspicious Eastern European bread-mix young Anwar is peddling. But you can sample for yourselves by reading this plot summary or by enjoying chapter one here. Read the rest of this entry »
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Extracts, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Reviews
- The Orbit Team - May 23rd, 2011
I’ve been looking forward to unveiling our cover visual for Rule 34, the latest brilliant near-future novel by Charles Stross. This one is set in Edinburgh in a future that’s just round the corner and takes us at a cracking pace though a complex series of bizarre interlinked crimes. We loved it and advance praise has been amazing too. But here’s the cover and some early quotes:
Cracking near-future crime laced with humour that’s exquisitely wrong’ Chris Brookmyre
‘A savvy, funny, viciously inventive science fiction novel that combines police procedure with the dark side of nerd culture to produce a grotesque and gripping page-turner’ Cory Doctorow
‘Charles Stross is a grandmaster of that most difficult science-fictional era, the near future. His novel, Rule 34, is a seamlessly transformation of our near-term everyday world into serious strangeness’
Vernor Vinge
‘Dazzling, chilling and brilliant’ Kirkus
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Art, Orbit UK
- The Orbit Team - March 4th, 2011
I’m delighted to announce our acquisition of three wonderful new books by the award-winning Charles Stross, and there’s been a big buzz of excitement at Orbit HQ over this new deal. I’ve loved Charles Stross’s books for years and always enjoy his wit, his storytelling wizardry and his playful familiarity with the cutting edge of technology. The new novels are The Apocalypse Codex, Neptune’s Brood and The Lambda Functionary and span the full range of Stross’s work – from Lovecraftian horror to space opera to near-future crime. And we’ll be publishing these in the UK/ANZ from Summer 2012.
Here’s just a snapshot of the great things that have been said about Charles Stross’s work:
As keenly observant of our emergent society as it is of our emergent technologies …one extremely smart species of fun” William Gibson
“Not only edgy and smart but grounded in human concerns” Wired
“Stretches the limits of narrative to make us see how wonderful ideas can be”
Time Out
“Stross is an author who anyone interested in SF should read and relish” SFX
“The cutting edge of modern science fiction” SFSite.com
by The Orbit Team • 1 Comment • Posted in: Deals and Deliveries, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
- The Orbit Team - July 15th, 2009
Following on from last week’s post about the publication of Saturn’s Children and Wireless, I see that the powers that be on the excellent SF podcast magazine, Escape Pod, have offered up their latest podcast and lo! it is none other than Charles Stross‘s ‘Rogue Farm’, which appears in the aforementioned Wireless.
So, point your iTunes, web browser or enslaved artificial intelligence at Escape Pod, and enjoy some free Strosstime: ‘Rogue Farm’, recorded at Balticon 43.
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Audio, New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
- The Orbit Team - July 10th, 2009
July sees the publication of not one, but two, new Charles Stross books – the paperback of Saturn’s Children and the hardback of Wireless.
Saturn’s Children is Charlie’s homage to the late Robert Heinlein, as the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted from this post’s title. It also gives Charlie a sixth consecutive Hugo shortlisting for Best Novel, which is a remarkable achievement – even the great Robert Silverberg only managed four. Audaciously told without a single human character, it is nonetheless replete with humanity as well as Charlie’s trademark dark humour, clever plotting and 100-mile-an-hour ideas.
Wireless, is a new collection of short fiction, including Locus Award-winning novella ‘Missile Gap’, Bob Howard story ‘Down on the Farm’ (read an extract here), ‘Unwirer’, a collaboration with fellow Prometheus Award-winner Cory Doctorow and the hitherto unpublished novella ‘Palimpsest’. Running the full gamut of Charlie’s incredible imagination, which, as everyone knows, goes up to eleven, Wireless is a snapshot of a writer at the height of his powers and a wonderful introduction to an essential voice in modern science fiction.
As multi-award-winning editor and anthologist Gardner Dozois says ‘Where Charles Stross goes today, the rests of science fiction will follow tomorrow.’
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: New Titles, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
- The Orbit Team - March 20th, 2009
Fantastic news just in: the final ballot for the 2009 Hugo Awards has been announced and we are absolutely delighted to congratulate Charles Stross, whose Saturn’s Children is nominated in the Best Novel category.
As if having a book shortlisted for the premier award in the SF world isn’t enough, the unfeasibly talented Mr Stross becomes the first author to have a novel on the Hugo shortlist in six consecutive years!
Trying to predict the future is fraught with peril, but I feel quite confident in saying that it will be quite some time before that amazing achievement is matched or bettered. Even the great Robert Silverberg only managed four-in-a-row.
Many congratulations to Charlie from all at Orbit, and if you are eligible to vote for the Hugos, remember:
Vote early
Vote often*
Vote Stross!
*Actually, maybe you shouldn’t vote often. That would probably be bad.
by The Orbit Team • 1 Comment • Posted in: All posts, Awards, News, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK
- The Orbit Team - March 21st, 2008
The shortlist for the 2008 Hugo Awards has just been released, and we are delighted to see that Charles Stross‘s cutting-edge near future heist thriller, Halting State, has made the ballot. This is the fifth consecutive year that a Charles Stross novel has been shortlisted for the Hugo, passing the great Robert Silverberg‘s previous record, which is an amazing achievement. Many congratulations to Charlie on his most recent shortlisting – we’ve all got our fingers crossed that he walks away with the rocket ship, this year!
Oh, and I’ve read his forthcoming space opera, Saturn’s Children – don’t bet against it being six-in-a-row, this time next year . . .
by The Orbit Team • Post a Comment • Posted in: Awards, New Titles, News, Orbit UK
