Charles Stross
I don't keep anything on paper (except within an actual novel in progress, at which point I need a file to keep track of plot threads, characters, and so on).Collection: Character
What I really think is that our current model of copyright is fundamentally broken. We badly need to replace it with a different system for remunerating creators, which gets it the hell out of the face of the public (who were never aware of it to begin with in the pre-internet dead tree era). Unfortunately, the current copyright model is enshrined in international trade treaty law, making it almost impossible to work around.Collection: Thinking
Today, we see some "file sharing" sites that rely on fans uploading cracked copies of ebooks, and which then make money off those books by charging for downloads (via cash subscriptions or advertising). Again: I take a dim view of this. They're making money off the back of my work without paying me.Collection: Book
Back in the pre-internet age there were pirate publishers, especially in the third world, who would print physical copies of books, sell them, and never inform the author/their agent/their publisher just trousering the money. I think we can agree that this was piracy?Collection: Book
The problem with ebook filesharing is simply one of scale. But I think the "piracy" problem is massively over-rated.Collection: Thinking
I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others.Collection: Couple
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.Collection: Mean
I have not watched the TV show. I do not generally watch TV sci-fi drama shows. They make me itch.Collection: Drama
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.Collection: Years
I grew up on second hand bookshops and libraries.Collection: Hands
The late 90s were crazy science-fictional if you were inside the superheated steam bubble of the dot-com 1.0 industry.Collection: Crazy
I don't like Amazon (wearing my author hat, not my customer hat).Collection: Amazon
I like lassic British spy thrillers. Seriously. If the cold war was still on, that's something I'd be writing.Collection: War
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!Collection: Organization
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Age
The dirty little secret of publishing is that, all along, each book sold has had an average of 5 readers. That's an 80% "piracy" rate if you insist on looking at it in those terms.Collection: Dirty
Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.Collection: Writing
My agent is based in New York. And due to a historic accident, my publishing track is primarily American - I'm sold into the UK almost as a foreign import! So I'm quite out of touch with what's going on in UK publishing.Collection: New York
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.Collection: Loss
Most established novelists are writing books informed by experiences gained in their youth. Middle age is not the best time to be changing smartphones every six months or adopting new technology platforms - because we tend to get slower and less accommodating to change as we age.Collection: Book
An important factor to note is that it's rare for anyone to sell a first novel written before they turned 30-35; long-format fiction tends to require a bunch of experience of human life that takes time to acquire. So your average mid-career novelist is in their forties to fifties!Collection: Careers
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.Collection: Degrees
I'm not planning a kickstarter game. And I'm not really a game designer.Collection: Games
There's a long-standing (50 year old) flame war within the field over whether it's "sci-fi" or "SF".SF has traditionally been looked down on by the literary establishment because, to be honest, much early SF was execrably badly written - but these days the significance of the pigeon hole is fading; we have serious mainstream authors writing stuff that is I-can't-believe-it's-not-SF, and SF authors breaking into the mainstream. If you view them as tags that point to shelves in bricks-and-mortar bookshops, how long are these genre categories going to survive in the age of the internet?Collection: War
I was heavily into AD&D in my teens (late 1970s-early 1980s) but fell off the RPG habit in the mid-80s and have never gone back to it; my lifestyle today isn't very compatible with having a regular gaming group (too much travel).Collection: Rpgs
I began my first novel when I was 15. It went through three drafts, of around 40,000 words each. If I find it, I'll burn it.Collection: Three
I drink tea pretty much continuously at a rate of around 1 imperial pint/hour, which sort of enforces screen/keyboard breaks.Collection: Tea
I write almost entlirely on Macs, because: Windows gives me hives.Collection: Writing
I have time to write 1-2 novels per year, and get roughly novel-sized ideas every month. I have to perform triage on my own writing impulses.Collection: Writing
It's usually quite easy to shrug and write something else instead.Collection: Writing
For a sampler, you could try my short story collection "Wireless". Which contains one novella that scooped a Locus award, and one that won a Hugo, and covers a range of different styles.Collection: Awards
Book depository is nothing new; there've been outlets selling books internationally via mail order for many decades - the only change is that it's now easier to find and use such services.Collection: Book
I don't want to permanently damage myself! On the other hand, a couple of days off the keyboard tends to make things somewhat better.Collection: Couple
If I wanted to be in movies, I'd have gone into scriptwriting: the fact that I write novels should be a big hint about what I prefer to do!Collection: Writing
While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.Collection: Book
Writers block: when I get it, it's because my subconscious spotted that I'd make a huge structural mistake in constructing a novel before my conscious mind became aware of it, and threw on the brakes. So I've learned not to sweat it: take two days off, then back up a chapter, read through, and try to work out why I'm suddenly uneasy about continuing.Collection: Mistake
I don't think most of my opinions, political or social, are so far outside of the mainstream that they'd cause massive outrage on a scale liable to provoke death threats or referrals to prosecutors for outraging public decency, so why worry?Collection: Thinking
Biggest influence: my mother.Collection: Mother
If an idea is compelling enough it'll stick in my head until I am forced to write it. If it's forgettable, who cares?Collection: Writing
I reckon I can count on 30 more writing years, averaging a book a year (I can't keep up the 2-2.5 a year I used to do these days). And these days I've gotten round to wondering, for each new idea, "do I want to be remembered for this?" before I get to the point of spending a year on it.Collection: Book
I wanted an agent who would actually sell stuff. After two British agents failed comprehensively, I was reading Locus (the SF field's trade journal) and noticed a press release about an experienced editor leaving her job to join an agent in setting up a new agency. And I went "aha!" - because what you need is an agent who knows the industry but who doesn't have a huge list of famous clients whose needs will inevitably be put ahead of you. So I emailed her, and ... well, 11 years later I am the client listed at the top of her masthead!Collection: Jobs
My favourite movie is: "Dr Strangelove". (I haven't seen any films released in the past 2-5 years, I'm afraid: I don't do TV/cinema).Collection: Past
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.Collection: Writing