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Charles Stross interview
01/09/2005 . Source: Orbit Books Team 
Science fiction author Charles Stross talks about his novels Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, how he tries to fit his working hours in around his social life, rather than vice versa, and why British SF is currently experiencing a renaissance of a kind that has not been seen since the new wave of the 1960s. Without giving too much away, can you tell us a little bit about the background to Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise?
Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise are set in a universe where faster-than-light travel is possible, and humans have colonized -- involuntarily -- a large number of planets. There's a big twist that distinguishes them from your normal space opera, however: general relativity tells us that FTL brings with it the spectre of causality paradoxes, of information arriving in places it can't possibly exist in because within the local frame of reference it hasn't set off yet ... and this is virtually indistinguishable from time travel. I set out to design a space opera universe that played by these rules. If we don't see time travel taking place, something must be preventing it -- but what?
Back in 2050 (in the history behind the books), scientists working on artificial intelligence research succeeded in triggering an outbreak of superintelligence -- an AI singularity. The singularity in question rapidly came up with a name for itself (the Eschaton) and briefly manifested some near-miraculous tech, opening wormholes to other planets and forcibly deporting 90% of the earth's population through them, before vanishing to no-one-knows-where, leaving only some cryptic warnings behind.
The wormhole endpoints were inhabitable planets, and for each light year out in spatial distance they went one year back in time; worlds 150 light years away had been settled by human beings for 150 years by the time a causal link with them was re-established after the singularity. With some evidence of human settlement up to 3000 light years out, the survivors on earth face a universe that is suddenly teeming with strange post-human civilizations -- and a sinister warning from the Eschaton against tampering with the structure of history.
At risk of hiding behind my authorial status, I'd like to add that there's a reason for this state of affairs (and even a reason why an Eschaton-like superintelligence might arise in a universe that permits time travel), but I'm going to keep it under my hat until a future book demands deeper explanations.
Meanwhile, to narrow the focus from the wide to the close-field, both books follow the affairs of an ill-assorted couple: Rachel Mansour, and Martin Springfield. She's a tough-as-nails arms inspector, hunting weapons of causality violation on behalf of the UN of Earth (the nearest thing to a government that's left there -- with 900 permanent members on the security council, they spend a lot of time in meetings).
He's a shipyard engineer, often sent out to work on starships operated by governments that can't build their own. Together, they hold a dangerous secret; the Eschaton takes a subtle and unpredictable interest in human affairs, for just about any starship can be converted (or perverted) into an improvised time machine, and just about any time machine can be used as a weapon. And the Eschaton has a way of dealing with people who use time travel as a weapon that you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of ...
Accelerando: same question.
Accelerando is an entirely different novel (although it shares some of its background with the forthcoming "Glasshouse" -- Ace, August 2006 [dunno if Tim has read it yet :)]). Starting in the very near future, against a background of rapidly accelerating change, Accelerando asks the question: do human beings have a future in a universe where artificial intelligence is possible and rapidly exceeds human comprehension?
Rapid change fascinates me. During the late 90s I worked as lead programmer at a successful dot-com start-up. It used to be a truism in the field that time on the internet ran at five times the speed of time in the real world -- you could cram a decade's worth of change into 24 months. Can human beings cope when you turn the dial controlling the rate of change of technology up to 11?
If we ever succeed in creating a machine that thinks as well as a human being, we have to face the probability that by throwing faster computing hardware at it we can make it think much faster than a human. Once that happens, we'll be confronted by a situation where the pacemaker driving the rate of change (be it technological invention or scientific research) is too fast to keep up with. Moreover, it may be possible that there exists the possibility of a type of intelligence (or many types) that are as much smarter than we are as we are than a dog, or a nematode worm. If we can in principle get *there* from *here*, then the fast-but-human-equivalent AIs will rapidly give way to deeper-than-human-equivalent AIs, inscrutable entities we can't understand even in principle.
Accelerando starts out with a post-dot-com hustler, Manfred Macx. Manfred is already borderline posthuman, and he's struggling to keep up; within a generation he's an obsolete burnout case, his daughter Amber has transmigrated into a simulation space hosted aboard a one kilogram starship, and they're dismantling the solar system to build more brains. A generation later ...
Did the idea for Accelerando come to you fully realised or did you have one particular starting point from which it grew?
Accelerando did indeed grow from a starting-point. Originally, in 1999, I was grappling with the idea of rapid change and I wrote a short story, "Lobsters", set in the near future -- around 2012. "Lobsters" was a success (it went on to be shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon awards) but I realized pretty rapidly that it begged the question in one vital respect; while it painted a vivid picture of Manfred and his affairs, it was a static snapshot. What I wanted was "rapid change: the movie", and to do that, it needed sequels. So I set out to write a story set a few years later.
At the end of "Lobsters" Manfred is about to get married to Pamela -- his partner in a spectacularly ill-starred relationship of opposites. So I fast-forwarded to the aftermath, and the inevitable divorce settlement, and the revelation that the catalyst for the divorce was Pamela's insistence on (a) bearing his child the traditional way and (b) *refusing* to have it genetically augmented - and this turned into the story "Troubadour". Midway through "Troubadour" I realized that it, too, needed a sequel - and then I'd have to confront the next generation and the singularity itself, and why not make it a trilogy of trilogies of stories, tracking three generations of the same family? Which is how the structure of the book emerged.
I realized pretty rapidly that this was a very difficult book to write. In the end it took me five years (and I wrote and sold another four novels in the meantime). It's quite different to my other work, and I guess it stands as a thesis about the structure of science fiction. If the fuel for our speculation is the future -- which implies change -- then what can we say about the *rate* of change? Let's jump from an algebraic approach, formulaic "if this goes on" extrapolation, to a calculus of the future.
How extensively do you plot your novels before you start writing them?
Variably.
In the case of Accelerando I had no idea I was working on a novel until I was 15% of the way through it, and no idea of the final structure until the end. Yet other novels -- for example, "The Clan Corporate" (Tor US, June 2006) are outlined scene-by-scene before I begin.
In general, I think the approach I take is dictated by my goal in writing the novel. If I'm trying to explore something new and strange, I don't outline in advance - but I have a grab bag of ideas, of obsessions that I want to work through, and I drop them all on the table in a messy pile, add characters, and see what the characters do with them. Then I go back and figure out what went wrong in the first draft and fix it. This is what happened with Singularity Sky and "Glasshouse" and, to a lesser extent, Accelerando. On the other hand, some novels I write as an exercise in story telling - "The Atrocity Archives", the fantasy series from Tor, and Iron Sunrise. These novels also have a grab bag of ideas, but it's more tightly controlled and I typically start by working out what the plot looks like before I start writing. In most cases the outline doesn't survive contact with reality, but at least it is there as a set of goal-posts to aim for.
Do you have a set writing routine and if so, what is it?
It varies. I used to work by trying to grind out a regular thousand words a day, every day. This, however, doesn't match the patterns of real work; for example, if a bunch of page proofs land on my desk with a note saying "we need this back in production next week", then that takes priority over other work. So these days I tend to write by setting myself a daily quota of words. If I exceed it three days in a row, I ratchet up to the new level that I've proven I can sustain - until something happens to disturb the flow (like a bunch of proofs landing on my desk).
Oh, I also work weird hours. As I write full-time, I mostly work at home. This is a weird, slightly claustrophobic form of existence if you're used to a workplace with other people about; it's surprising how much time most of us spend engaging in social interactions in our jobs, and going into an office with nobody else and barring the door every day is very isolating. So I try to fit my working hours in around my social life, rather than vice versa, as long as the social life doesn't get in the way of me working at all.
Do you find it frustrating that so much excellent work is currently being produced in SF & Fantasy but that by and large it is still ignored by the literati?
It used to bother me, but I've met some of the literati and read some of the literature they dote on, and frankly, it's best to shrug and walk away from that kind of argument. Genre fiction contains a large proportion of rubbish ... and so does the mainstream form. Good literature *will* be recognized, wherever it comes from. It doesn't matter if *everyone* recognizes it -- there's no point in trying to convince a classical music aficionado of the quality of a jazz quartet, or a jazz enthusiast of the merits of industrial music. We have a sufficiency of readers and critics of our own; we can afford to be generous and allow the high literary fraternity to hang on to their own territory.
Do you see any particular trends in recent SF?
What is a trend?
It's true that there's an internal dialogue among authors working in the genre. If someone writes something really neat you might think "hey, that's a neat idea!" and beg, borrow, or steal it to re-work into your own fiction. (Ring the changes.) But I'm not sure I'd put it more strongly than that. Certainly Iain Banks triggered a renewed interest in space opera with his culture novels in the late 80s, and a lot of us are still working through the implications. Beyond that, though, it becomes hard to discuss trends with any certainty.
The one thing I'd point to, however, is that British SF is currently experiencing a renaissance of a kind that has not been seen since the new wave of the 1960s -- and which may in fact be bigger. There are large numbers of new authors (and quite a few old ones) writing stuff that feels qualitatively different from traditional British SF, which had something of a reputation for being downbeat and depressive prior to the mid-1980s. The cognitive and biological sciences have become serious areas for exploration in hard-SF, and there's a lively interest in politics and culture; all in all it's no coincidence that all of this year's Hugo nominees in the best novel category are written by British authors.
Do you have any particular favourite authors who have influenced your work?
Loads. The trouble is, singling out any one of them will merely cast a shadow across the others! Suffice to say, I read around the field a lot (as well as venturing outside it).
Finally, do you think that science fiction can really help us to adapt to the astonishing rate of change of modern life or are we just kidding ourselves?
I'm not sure SF *is* about helping ourselves adapt to the rate of change.
Change is always going to entail surprise, and by definition, we cannot expect the actual unexpected.
On the other hand, we can learn to expect to be surprised. And this is something SF teaches us very effectively. It's called "sense of wonder". And we'll know we've finally been overrun by the future when we lose the capacity to feel it.
And thanks to Orbit Books for permission to post this interview. For more details of their SFF authors and books, visit Orbit at www.orbitbooks.co.uk 
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