I recently cornered scifi writer Charles Stross because I had a fortune of incinerate interrogation after reading his most late novel Saturn ’s Children , about a sexbot who becomes a smuggler . But after a spot of cursory bonding over our love of net erotica , and a few excellent tales about his previous life exercise at a Scots ISP where one of his jobs was preclude a cat from micturate on the modem that delivered the internet to all of Scotland , we wound up consume a very interesting conversation that I was not await . It was about why science fiction created in the U.S. is so dystopian in good order now , while UK scifi is much woozy about the hereafter . I had ask Stross , somewhat off the cuff , why so many Scotch SF writer are kick back ass these days ( I was thinking in finical of Ken MacLeod , Iain M. Banks , Grant Morrison , and Stross himself ) . And that ’s how we stupefy onto the subject . He had a very accurate solution , which involved both politics and the celebrated observational scifi magazine Interzone . Initially , he said that Scotland has an especially misanthropical position :
It ’s the cynicism of a modest nation that has been a third-year partner in coalition of the not very willing . Scots are Cynic and outsider , but there ’s more hopefulness now .
After a long discussion on the Scottish political science , and the peculiar rise of leftist nationalism there , Stross added :
Its mental attitude to the UK is like the position of Canada to US . I think it will form its own state in 4 or 5 years .
Even if lefty Scots nationalism bode a potential legal separation from England , Stross nevertheless thinks that Scottish cynicism has been tempered of late by a general melody of hopefulness in the U.K. :
A lot of people in the UK no longer recollect the British Empire at all – there are just a few weird hangovers lead like the Faulklands . And yet the [ post - Empire ] economic descent has reversed and the U.K. is at the end of a 10 - year godsend . Writers chew over when and where they compose , and now the radioactive dust from the Thatcher years is finally over . When the dust make up , you get the planet ’s sixth great economy expatiate again . The worst happened , the Empire had collapse , and we were still around . And there ’s the background knowledge [ U.K. writers ] are writing against – a hopefulness triggered by the political shift forth from conservatism and also the economic rebound after the 1980s .
For Stross and many of his generation , these variety led to a fresh variety of science fable write because a radical of editors founded the experimental scifi magazine Interzone in the early 1980s . So just as the U.K. hasten towards societal change , there was a magazine primed to issue and disseminate tales of a changed world – potentially , a more hopeful world . As U.K. scifi rediscovers trust in the ashes of a dead Empire , the U.S. is plunging rashly into a period of declining Empire . The powerful nation , financially dampen by foreign wars and internal economical crisis , is facing its own possible mortality – and Stross believes you may see this in the lack of U.S. science fiction that is set in the near future :
The paucity of near - future US scifi is about the res publica becoming pessimistic , not being capable to see the future tense clearly . There ’s a course in US scifi towards militarism and far - future material .
I mentioned that the Terminator franchise is a estimable instance of this , and Stross enjoin me what most of his fans already know : He watches no boob tube , and very few movies . He say he was “ a little freaked out ” when he pick up that the sexbots Saturn ’s Children were so similar to the cylons in Battlestar Galactica because he ’s never seen the show . need to hump what ’s next for Stross , who is an devilishly prolific author as well as the former saver of the Scotch cyberspace from cat pee ? He ’s finishing up his proportion - hopping Merchant Princes series . Then , he said :
I ’m work to compose 419 , sequel to Halting State . After that comes The Fuller Memorandum , which is the third wash novel [ and sequel to The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue ] . I only get a laundry book every 5 yr , and that ’s a serial I want to be writing . They ’re really fun to write .
As he view me diligently typecast away while he answered my questions , Stross intersect his arms and tot up :
If you ’re going to write for a living , you should find something fun to write .
I ’m trying , I ’m trying .
BooksCharles Stross
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