Latest Charles Stross Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

  Mean, Use, Way

• 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

  Age, Pay, Time Is Money

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 02, 2012.

• I have not watched the TV show. I do not generally watch TV sci-fi drama shows. They make me itch.

  Charles Stross

  Drama, Tv Shows, Watches

• 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

  Years, Needs, Answers

• I grew up on second hand bookshops and libraries.

  Charles Stross

  Hands, Library, Grew Up

• The late 90s were crazy science-fictional if you were inside the superheated steam bubble of the dot-com 1.0 industry.

  Charles Stross

  Crazy, Dots, Steam

• I tend to think that immortal souls, invisible sky daddies, and Santa Claus all belong in the same basket. The disposition of that basket is left as an exercise for the reader.

  Charles Stross

  Exercise, Thinking, Sky

• 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

  Writing, Fiction, Firsts

• I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.)

  Charles Stross

  Half, Linux, Firsts

• I wrote two million words of crap. Maybe I'm just a slow learner .

  Charles Stross

  Two, Crap, Learners

• 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

  Believe, Light, Needs

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 2, 2012.

• I don't like Amazon (wearing my author hat, not my customer hat).

  Charles Stross

  Amazon, Hats, Customers

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 2, 2012.

• What I'm hoping for is something that goes much, much further than the conservative enablers of dog-eat-dog capitalism putting on a puppet show of cleaning house. But that's probably not going to happen just yet.

  Charles Stross

  Dog, House, Puppets

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 2, 2012.

• 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

  Running, Europe, Usa

• 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

  Football, Violent, Grew Up

• I like lassic British spy thrillers. Seriously. If the cold war was still on, that's something I'd be writing.

  Charles Stross

  War, Writing, Spy

• Personal pride is probably a bad guide to merit.

  Charles Stross

  Pride, Merit, Guides

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 02, 2012.

• I'm an individual. I do not want to get into a pissing match with an organization that is a de-facto gigadollar-turnover multinational!

  Charles Stross

  Organization, Want, Individual

• 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

  Thinking, Gps, Years

• For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes.

  Charles Stross

  Writing, Tired, Skills

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 02, 2012.

• I have a fear of nuclear annihilation. I'm a child of the cold war: I didn't live more than 10 miles from a major WarPac nuclear target until the Berlin Wall came down and the CW ended. Knowing you can die horribly at any moment because of decisions made by alien intelligences thousands of miles away who don't even know you exist - there's something Lovecraftian about that, isn't there?

  Charles Stross

  Children, Wall, War

• I'd like to be proven wrong on the difficulty of handling the medical side-effects of long term exposure to deep space (both microgravity induced illnesses and radiation damage).

  Charles Stross

  Space, Long, Radiation

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 02, 2012.

• I'd like to be proven wrong firstly on the difficulty of building a self-sustaining closed circuit ecosystem in space that can support human life.

  Charles Stross

  Self, Ecosystems, Space

• 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

  Strong, Believe, Mp3

• I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.

  Charles Stross

  Couple, May, Terrible