All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night. Charles Stross More Quotes by Charles Stross More Quotes From Charles Stross 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 radiationspacelong 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 ecosystemsspaceself I'm told that a couple of my Russian translations are just plain terrible, though, and there may be others. Charles Stross terriblecouplemay 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 mp3strongbelieve More often than not, piracy is a symptom of an under-provisioned market. Charles Stross piracysymptoms 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 time-is-moneyagepay 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 usemeanway I have not watched the TV show. I do not generally watch TV sci-fi drama shows. They make me itch. Charles Stross tv-showsdramawatches 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 answersyearsneeds I grew up on second hand bookshops and libraries. Charles Stross librarygrew-uphands The late 90s were crazy science-fictional if you were inside the superheated steam bubble of the dot-com 1.0 industry. Charles Stross steamdotscrazy 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. Charles Stross sweatblockmistake 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 linuxhalffirsts I wrote two million words of crap. Maybe I'm just a slow learner . Charles Stross learnerscraptwo 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. Charles Stross brokenlawthinking 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. Charles Stross fansviewsbook 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? Charles Stross piratebookthinking The one thing that does happen, every time, though, is that I never get to write a book until I've already been thinking about it for a period of months to years. Charles Stross writingbookthinking No two books come out the same way. Some I write by the seat of my pants; others are planned in minute detail. Charles Stross writingtwobook I do not click on random youtube videos. Charles Stross youtubeclicksvideo
