Last updated: May 5th, 2007 — ebook availability notes
Charles Stross is the full-time writer who is the subject of this FAQ.
Writers are often boring people. They stay home and they, like, write for hours and hours every day. Watching them write is really boring, because believe it or not it takes much longer to write a book than it takes to read it. So let's not go there. They also develop weird neurotic habits like talking about themselves in the third person past tense, like this. Take Stross's advice -- leave him alone, he's boring.
Born in Leeds, England, Stross knew he wanted to be a science fiction writer from the age of six, and astonishingly, nobody ever considered therapy until it was too late. He didn't really get started until his early teens (when his sister loaned him a manual typewriter around the time he was getting heavily into Dungeons and Dragons); the results were unexpected, and he's been trying to bury them ever since. He made his first commercial for-money sale to Interzone in 1986, and sold about a dozen stories elsewhere throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s before a dip in his writing career. He began writing fiction in earnest again in 1998, and that's probably why you're reading this FAQ.
Along the way to his current occupation, he went to university in London and qualified as a Pharmacist. (This is what you get for listening to people who tell you "but you can't earn a living as a writer -- get a career first!") He figured out it was a bad idea the second time the local police staked his shop out for an armed robbery -- he's a slow learner. Sick at heart from drugging people and dodging SWAT teams and gangsters -- it's hard to do that when you're wearing a lab coat -- he went back to university in Bradford and did a postgraduate degree in computer science. After several tech sector jobs in the hinterlands around London, initially in graphics supercomputing and then in the UNIX industry, he emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, and switched track into web consultancy and a subsequent dot com death march.
All good things come to an end, and Stross made the critical career error of trying to change jobs early in 2000, just in time for the bottom to drop out of the first dot-com boom. However, he had a parachute: he was writing a monthly Linux column for Computer Shopper, and by a hop, a skip and a jump that would be denounced as implausible by any self-respecting editor, he managed to turn this unemployment into an exciting full time career opportunity as a freelance journalist specialising in Linux and free software. (The adjective "exciting" applies as much to the freelance journalist's relationship with their bank manager as to their career structure.) Even more implausibly, after fifteen years of abject obscurity, his fiction became an overnight success in the US, with five novel sales and several Hugo nominations in the space of two years.
He now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feorag, a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers.
See his online bibliography and story collection. (Sorry, but new stories aren't being added to the online repository -- at least not until after the next dead-tree collection is sorted out.)
Some of his earlier short stories are collected in Toast (Cosmos Books, 2001). A new collection will probably be forthcoming in 2008 or 2009.
See his index page for links to pages on his web book from 1995, Perl, and Linux features. Note that this is all horribly out of date.
Prepare to be confused.
Stross has sold fourteen novels to date. Of these, all have
been sold to US
publishers; four seven have been sold to UK publishers; and various
translations are on sale or in progress in France, Germany, the
Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, Japan,
and Bulgaria. Other translations are in the pipeline.
However, he's sold them all so recently (since 2001!) that not all are in print yet. In particular, as his primary publishers are American, the UK publication schedule lags a little.
Here's a sequential run-down of the books, in the order written and sold:
The Atrocity Archive (short extract here) is a short (80,000 word) cross-genre novel, combining aspects of science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and the classic British spy thriller. It was originally serialised by British SF magazine Spectrum SF, in issues 7-9 inclusive, then republished as "The Atrocity Archives" (an omnibus containing "The Atrocity Archive" and a sequel novella, "The Concrete Jungle", plus a foreward by Ken MacLeod and an afterword by Stross). "The Atrocity Archives" was originally published in hardcover in the United States by Golden Gryphon as "The Atrocity Archives". Note: "The Concrete Jungle" won the Hugo award for the best SF/fantasy novella in 2005.
Ace books republished "The Atrocity Archives" as a trade paperback in January 2006, and a mass-market paperback edition is forthcoming in March 2007. Orbit UK will be publishing "The Atrocity Archives" in paperback in June 2007.
The Science Fiction Book Club published an omnibus edition of "The Atrocity Archives" and "The Jennifer Morgue", titled "On Her Majesty's Occult Service", in early 2007. (This is not a separate novel.)
(A French translation is available from Editions Robert Laffont; a German translation from Heyne is in preparation.)
Written before The Atrocity Archive, Singularity Sky is a post-singularity space opera. Ace books published it in hardcover in August 2003 and as a mass-market paperback in July 2004. Singularity Sky was shortlisted for the Hugo Award in 2004. (Various translations are under way.)
A UK edition, titled "Festival of Fools", was scheduled to be published in the UK by Big Engine in early 2003, but Big Engine went into liquidation prior to publication. The UK rights were finally acquired by Orbit and published as "Singularity Sky" on July 1st 2004 (hardcover), and February 1st 2005 (paperback).
Obligatory blurb: "In a universe where the unseen but never unfelt force known as the Eschaton maintains the laws of relativity and cause-and-effect with an iron fist, the Festival comes to Rochard's World and changes it forever. The Festival seeks only to entertain and be entertained: promises whatever you want and has the power to deliver it, even to the poorest beggar on the planet. Rochard's World belongs to the New Republic, a state governed rigidly by hierarchy and tradition and ideology. The New Republic despatches a war fleet to deal with the threat, never imagining what will happen when ideologies and technologies collide."
A sequel to Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise was published in hardback by Ace in July 2004, and in paperback in July 2005. The UK hardcover edition was published in February 2005, and the paperback in July 2005.
Battered and bruised from the collision between the New Republic and the Festival, arms inspector Rachel Mansour is looking forward to a quiet leave back home on Earth. But a distant McWorld has been destroyed by an illegal causality violation device -- and its slower-than-light bomber fleet is hurtling towards another planet, ready to inflict a mistaken vengeance. When someone starts murdering the diplomats who can cancel the attack, Rachel is dragged into a search for a runaway girl who shadowy conspirators are trying to kill -- a girl whose memories may contain the truth about who caused the Iron Sunrise.
Note: Iron Sunrise was shortlisted for the best novel Hugo award in 2005.
The first volume of The Merchant Princes, was published by Tor on December 1st 2004 in hardcover, and on May 1st 2005 in paperback. It's a fantasy novel, for rather odd values of fantasy; there are many parallel time lines, and in one pre-industrial world, a family of itinerant tinkers and pedlars discover they have the ability to walk to other worlds. Then they start developing a trade with our own time line. Meanwhile, an investigative journalist loses her job with a major business publication and decides to find out who her pre-adoption parents were. What she stumbles across will be the scoop of a career -- if she can survive long enough to file the story.
Books 1-3 are currently published by Tor in the US. The first book, "The Family Trade", is available in hardcover and paperback. Sequel "The Hidden Family" is available in hardcover and paperback to follow in 2006. Book 3, "The Clan Corporate" is available only in hardcover (paperback due: March 2007). Subsequent books in the series are not yet published. "The Merchants' War" is due out in late 2007; a fifth and sixth book are contracted for and will follow at 12 month intervals. (NB: "The Merchants' War" was retitled from an original version, which was "The Merchants' Revolution". Yes, this stuff happens. Don't bother looking for the Revolution book, it's a figment of my imagination.)
British publication news flash: after a long delay in selling British rights, "The Family Trade" is now due out from Pan Macmillan in the UK in paperback (under the Tor imprint) in November 2007. Subsequent novels are provisionally scheduled to follow at 6 monthly intervals.
See above. Available in hardcover and paperback.
See above. Available in hardback.
The novel from which the award-nominated series of novellas in Asimov's SF magazine is drawn, Accelerando is a family saga that follows three generations of a dysfunctionally postmodern lineage right through a Vingean singularity, as recounted by the family's robot cat. It's much, much weirder than that, though. Accelerando was published by Ace (US) in hardcover in July 2005, and by Orbit (UK) in hardcover on August 4th, 2005. It is now available in paperback as well.
Note: Elector (chapter 8) was nominated for the Hugo for best novella in 2005, competing against "The Concrete Jungle". (That makes a total of four Hugo nominations, one Nebula nomination, two Sturgeons, one BSFA, and a Seiun shortlisting -- before the novel was finished!) The complete novel was shortlisted for the BSFA, Arthur C. Clarke, and Hugo awards, and won the Locus Readers Award.
Glasshouse is a claustrophobic far-future helter-skelter ride through an experimental archaeology project gone horribly wrong. Published by Ace (US) as a hardcover in July 2006; the UK edition from Orbit is available in paperback from March 1st, 2007. As the cover flap says:
"Hi, I'm Robin. When people ask me what I did during the war, I tell them I used to be a tank regiment. Or maybe I was a counter-intelligence agent. I'm not exactly sure: my memory isn't what it used to be."
When Robin wakes up in a clinic with most of his memories missing, it doesn't take him long to discover that someone is trying to kill him. It's the twenty-seventh century, when interstellar travel is by teleport gate and conflicts are fought by network worms that censor refugees' personalities and target historians. The civil war is over and Robin has been demobilized, but someone wants him out of the picture because of something his earlier self knew.
On the run from a ruthless pursuer and searching for a place to hide, he volunteers to participate in a unique experimental polity, the Glasshouse. Constructed to simulate a pre-accelerated culture, participants are assigned anonymized identities: it looks like the ideal hiding place for a posthuman on the run. But in this escape-proof environment Robin will undergo an even more radical change, placing him at the mercy of the experimenters, and at the mercy of his own unbalanced psyche ...
Bob Howard is back, in a sequel to The Atrocity Archives that does for James Bond what the earlier novel did for Harry Palmer. Due for publication in hardcover by Golden Gryphon in November 2006, and in trade paperback by Ace and mass-market UK paperback from Orbit in November 2007.
A sequel to The Clan Corporate, due out in November 2007. Two more books in the series are currently planned, following "The Merchant's War" at 12 month intervals.
A near-future thriller set in the bizarre world of the software houses that develop massively-multiplayer online roleplaying games. A bank has been robbed, a start-up company's massive IPO postponed, and the company's lead programmer has gone missing. It's up to an unlikely team of investigators, sent in by the venture capitalists backing the IPO, to figure out what happened and get the money back. There's just a slight catch: the robbers were a gang of Orcs, and the money may have been smuggled over the border into another reality ....
Vernor Vinge says: "Charles Stross is the most spectacular science-fiction writer of recent years. In Halting State, he has written a near-future story that is at once over-the-top and compellingly believable.".
And if that's not enough for you, William Gibson says: "As keenly observant of our emergent society as it is our emergent technologies, Halting State is one extremely smart species of fun."
Due for publication by Ace as a hardcover in October 2007, and by Orbit in the UK in trade paperback in March 2008.
A space opera. Due out in 2008 on both sides of the Atlantic. (Trailed in some places as a sequel to "Iron Sunrise" -- this is not the case; it's a stand-alone set in an entirely different universe. Don't ask for further details, as I'm writing it now ...)
Not exactly a novel, "Missile Gap" is a novella originally published in the anthology "One Million AD". It's available as a hardcover stand-alone from Subterranean Press.
Actually, no, but these are the novels Stross has under contract. Future projects will be listed here when they are sold. As a matter of policy Stross prefers not to speculate publicly on stuff he hasn't done yet, because he always hatches six new hare-brained schemes before breakfast: it would be easy to promise too much and generate unrealistic expectations.
There are also some other works Stross is not drawing attention to. Chief among these are a journeyman short story collection (Toast) which collects earlier works, and a web book (The Web Architect's Handbook) which came out in 1996 -- a year late! -- and is now an historic document rather than anything you'd use to design a web site. You may also come across a book titled Timelike Diplomacy: this is an omnibus edition of "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise", published by the SF Book Club in 2004 as a handy wrist-breaking tome, so don't mistake it for a new novel! And in 2007 SFBC are due to publish a similar omnibus edition of "The Atrocity Archives" and "The Jennifer Morgue", titled "On Her Majesty's Occult Service".
Stross's publishers all have mainstream distribution and can be found in most major bookstores (including the reissued short story collection, Toast, and the Golden Gryphon editions).
Here's the provisional US publication schedule (hardcovers only):
| Title | Publisher | When |
| Singularity Sky | Ace | Aug 2003 |
| The Atrocity Archive | Golden Gryphon | Apr 2004 |
| Iron Sunrise | Ace | July 2004 |
| The Family Trade | Tor | Dec 2004 |
| The Hidden Family | Tor | June 2005 |
| Accelerando | Ace | July 2005 |
| The Clan Corporate | Tor | Jun 2006 |
| Glasshouse | Ace | July 2006 |
| The Jennifer Morgue | Golden Gryphon | December 2006 |
| The Merchants War | Tor | Jun 2007 |
| Halting State | Ace | July 2007 |
| Merchant Princes book #5 | Tor | Jun 2008 |
| Saturn's Children | Ace | July 2008 |
And here's the UK publication schedule:
| Title | Publisher | When |
| Singularity Sky | Orbit | Aug 2004 |
| Iron Sunrise | Orbit | Feb 2005 |
| Accelerando | Orbit | August 2005 |
| Glasshouse | Orbit | March 2007 |
| The Atrocity Archives | Orbit | June 2007 |
| The Jennifer Morgue | Orbit | November 2007 |
| A Family Trade | Pan MacMillan | November 2007 |
| Saturn's Children | Orbit | July 2008 |
You'll have spotted that the UK schedule is much thinner than the US one. That's because only the SF novels initially sold in the UK. The fantasy and horror titles were far slower to sell in the UK (for reasons which probably have more to do with general market conditions -- which suck right now in the UK, for both horror and fantasy -- than their merits as books). "The Atrocity Archives" and "The Jennifer Morgue" will now be published by Orbit, and the Merchant Princes books by Pan MacMillan. Sorry 'bout the long wait ...
You can order the books via the web (if you want to):
People keep asking me about electronic editions of my books. Here's the (long, confusing) answer.
For the past decade or so, it has been policy among the major publishers to buy all electronic rights to novels they acquire for paper publication. This doesn't mean they actually intend to do anything with the rights — just that they get all angsty if they don't own them. Indeed, not selling the electronic rights can be a deal-breaker. So my ebook rights are owned by my publishers (Ace and Tor in the US, Orbit in the UK).
Whether and how electronic editions are published depends on the publisher.
Ace have published ebook editions of "Singularity Sky", "The Atrocity Archives", and "Accelerando" (oddly, not "Iron Sunrise"). The ebooks are available via Fictionwise. They are DRM-locked to a single machine, come in annoying proprietary file formats ... and cost as much as the current paper edition.
However, despite the commercial ebooks being rather reader-hostile, "Accelerando" remains available as a free promotional download for readers (go here).
For contractual reasons it has not been possible to release "Glasshouse" on the same basis as "Accelerando".Tor briefly sold the first two "Merchant Princes" books via Webscription during March 2006, but for commercial reasons suspended the experiment. I will update this entry if/when they resume publication. (I would, however, whole-heartedly recommend Webscriptions as being the only e-book publisher who is doing everything right.)
The whole ebook situation is liable to change very rapidly. In particular, I believe the ebook market is finally showing signs of maturation (with numerous cheap digital paper based readers due to arrive on the market in 2007-08), and I'm going to do my best to ensure that cheap and/or DRM-free ebook editions of my work are available wherever possible. (It is my opinion that DRM is immoral; it attempts to shake down our shared cultural heritage for an access fee, and imposes limitations on use that go far beyond the legal boundaries imposed by copyright law.)