The WELL: inkwell.vue.456: Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross - The Rapture of the Nerds

#119: Charlie Stross (charlie-stross) Fri 5 Oct 12 14:09

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:09:00 PDT

Thanks for having us! [Read entire topic]

#118: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Fri 5 Oct 12 12:19

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:19:00 PDT

Really great guys, thanks so much for graciously sharing some time with us. [Read entire topic]

#117: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Fri 5 Oct 12 11:23

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:23:00 PDT

Charlie, I wish we could go on and on, especially about your upcoming in-residence gig... and maybe about communist squids. You're welcome to stay and continue the conversation, however yesterday was the last "official" day of the conversation, and the beginning of a new conversation with Susan Sachs Lipman.

Profound thanks to Charlie and Cory for fitting this conversation into hyper-busy schedules! Hope we can do this again soon... [Read entire topic]

#116: Jef Poskanzer (jef) Fri 5 Oct 12 10:39

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:39:00 PDT

Hey, I just saw a note that Cory is reading at Books Inc. in Berkeley tonight! 7pm, 4th Street near Delaware. [Read entire topic]

#115: Charlie Stross (charlie-stross) Fri 5 Oct 12 03:22

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 03:22:00 PDT

What am I working on now, and what am I excited about?

W-e-e-e-e-l-l ...

I probably won't surprise you if I confess to getting bored easily. So I keep multiple long-term projects on the go simultaneously. One of these is the Laundry series, an odd mixture of humour, horror, spy thriller, Lovecraftian SF, and ... oh hell. If you haven't met them, try to imagine the British secret civil service agency for protecting the realm from the scum of the multiverse. Our protagonist, Bob, comes out of the slashdot-reading, sandal-wearing geek culture of the late 90s dot-com bubble (British subdivision) and accidentally ended up in Len Deighton land. Then it gets weird.

I'm currently working on the fifth Laundry novel, "The Rhesus Chart", for publication in summer 2014. As for what it's about, that would be a spoiler, but I'll give you the first line for free:

"Don't be silly, Bob," said Mo: "everyone knows vampires don't exist."

As for why this one's due in summer 2014 -- my summer 2013 slot is already occupied by "Neptune's Brood". Set in the same universe as 2008's Hugo-nominated novel "Saturn's Children", but a whole lot later, it's a sort-of space opera. At least, it features space bat pirates, communist squids in space, and atomic powered posthuman/robot mermaids strip-mining a water world. But it's *actually* an extended parable about the 2008 banking liquidity crisis and the nature of financial fraud. (Please go easy on me when you see the cover: my publishers thought that the financial fraud angle would be a harder sell than MERMAID BOOBIES!!!1!!ELEVENTY!! so they went with the latter ...)

Finally, looking further ahead, in the next year I'll be juggling two projects: a creative in residence gig for a new academic cross-disciplinary research group focussing on copyright and new business models in the intellectual property area (based in the UK), and a trilogy I'm not supposed to talk about in public yet.

There's nothing like keeping busy, is there? [Read entire topic]

#114: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Thu 4 Oct 12 12:25

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:25:00 PDT

We've come to the final day of our discussion, and I have one last question, the most obvious: what are you working on now, and what are you excited about? [Read entire topic]

#113: Charlie Stross (charlie-stross) Wed 3 Oct 12 08:51

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 08:51:00 PDT

Jon, if you have to bend the plot to fit the characters, you're not doing it right.

My take is that the plot/story/narrative direction should emerge organically from the interactions between the characters and their environment (including each other). Of course, in SF part of the job is to redefine the environment in an interesting way that suggests plot directions that wouldn't occur in a non-genre work; but, hey, characters! You can do a lot to influence how the plot will evolve by chosing your protagonists carefully. You don't pick a shy, retiring accountant if you want a two-fisted action adventure, and you don't send a gun-fighter to a magician's duel -- not unless you're looking for a comedy of errors, or cognitive dissonance, or something like that. [Read entire topic]

#112: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 3 Oct 12 04:49

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 04:49:00 PDT

Much science fiction is driven by ideas, more focused on plot and concept than character. How do you "brew" characters for your fiction? Do you tend to bend plot to character or vice-versa? [Read entire topic]

#111: Charlie Stross (charlie-stross) Wed 3 Oct 12 02:49

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 02:49:00 PDT

Jon #110: Some writers have a phobia of exposing work in progress to readers. Other writers need a large focus group of test readers around them. I fall somewhere in the middle; I use a group of test readers to spot holes in the work as I proceed, but I don't let them guide the text.

(Speech rec: that last sentence came out as "I use a group of test readers to squat holes in the work as I proceed, but I don't let them read the text." Gotta love it! It creates more typing than it saves.)

I am a storyteller; I come up with ideas in company, watch people's responses to the ideas, modify them, bend, spindle, and mutilate them, and finally weave them into the narrative. [Read entire topic]

#110: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Tue 2 Oct 12 11:32

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:32:00 PDT

We'll go slowly, then.

Civilians might think an author works in a vacuum, but most writers I know have social processes - sharing with respected others to get their input, discussing with formal or informal writing groups, etc. Do you get a lot of input from others as you're drafting a fiction? [Read entire topic]