I published three short stories last year in addition to my novel Pirate Sun and the novella "To Hie from Far Cilenia."  You can find one of those stories, "The Hero," in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition, edited by Gardner Dozois.  I'm the company of Paolo Bacigalupi, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Aliete de Bodard, James L. Cambias, Greg Egan, Charles Coleman Finlay, James Alan Gardner, Dominic Green, Daryl Gregory, Gwyneth Jones, Ted Kosmatka, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nancy Kress, Jay Lake, Paul McAuley, Ian McDonald, Maureen McHugh, Sarah Monette, Garth Nix, Hannu Rajaniemi, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Mary Rosenblum, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Geoff Ryman, Gord Sellar, and Michael Swanwick.  "The Hero" was originally published in Eclipse Two, edited by Jonathon Strahan.

As if that wasn't enough, the story "Mitigation," which I wrote with Tobias Buckell, has been published in The Year's Best SF 14, edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.  Our company in this volume includes Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Alastair Reynolds again and, naturally, Michael Swanwick.  "Mitigation" first appeared in Fast Forward Two, edited by Lou Anders.

Since "To Hie from Far Cilenia" is up for a Hugo award as part of the METAtropolis audiobook project, I'd say 2008 was a pretty good year.

Thanks to Davide Mana, the Alia project in Italy has translated my short story "Halo" for the ALIA project of L'ARCIPELAGO DEL FANTASTICO.  ALIA is an anthology in several volumes, and in several languages.

I'm honored to part of this collection, and hope it's very successful for Davide and his team.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly has to say about the upcoming (August) print edition of our Hugo-nominated shared world project, METAtropolis:

Editor Scalzi (Zoe’s Tale) and four well known writers thoughtfully postulate the evolution of cities, transcending postapocalyptic clichés to envision genuinely new communities and relationships. Selfsustaining walled cities struggle with their responsibilities to dying suburbs in Scalzi’s “Utere Nihil Non Extra Quiritationem Suis”; goods are exchanged through multiple microtransactions in Tobias S. Buckell’s “Stochasti-City” and a reputation economy in Elizabeth Bear’s “The Red in the Sky Is Our Blood.” A lone man attempts to overthrow an early enclave in Jay Lake’s “In the Forests of the Night,” while Karl Schroeder’s “To Hie from Far Celenia” brilliantly combines steampunk, urban sociology and network theory as entire subcultures go “off the grid.” Each story shines on its own; as a group they reinforce one another, building a multifaceted view of a realistic and hopeful urban future. (Aug.

Edited by John Scalzi. Subterranean, $30 (264p) ISBN 978-1-59606-238-2 )

I've got a new interview up at Grinding to Valhalla.  This is a gaming site, and as such they asked a couple of perceptive questions that I'd never be asked by literary interviewer.  

Thanks, Randolph!

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say right off the bat that I've written an award-winning short story and a novel with David Nickle.  I consider him one of the finest horror writers around, and in combination we've crafted some pretty weird stuff; but by temperament David's always been a short fiction writer.  His best pieces are small, intricately-crafted, and often disturbing glimpses of humanity's dark side.  Now, he's finally collected some of them into a book you can buy.  The book is Monstrous Affections.

David's work is by turns horrific, touching, and wickedly funny--sometimes all at the same time.  (Consider a vampire-as-special-needs-kid story where the poor misunderstood vampire toddler is swarmed by righteous preschoolers and--well, you can imagine.)  David's got a blog you can check out, The Devil's Exercise Yard, which is lots of fun, and of course you can still find copies of the novel we wrote together, The Claus Effect, which is basically a James Bond thriller with Santa Claus as the super-villain.

Monstrous Affections is available now for pre-order from the Horror Mall (as warm and cuddly a website as you can imagine).  The book will be released on Halloween of 2009; but by ordering it now, you send a strong signal to the publisher and other interested parties that you're interested in David's work.  And, if you later forget that you've put in the order, you'll have a pleasant little surprise in your mailbox around Halloween (and it won't be a stick or somebody's left ear!  Although, who knows, you might get that too).

To promote the upcoming release of The Sunless Countries, we've decided to offer the Sun of Suns audiobook for free download.  There's a discussion about it going on right now at Tor.com; for the download itself, go to the Audible.com site.

Now, since I'm the author anything I say about the quality of the story itself is obviously biased; but I can say without reservation that the reader, Joyce Irvine, does an excellent job with my material.  If there's flaws in my prose she easily talks around them, and she's a great choice for the material.  (And if you like how she does this, you should try her dry and distantly amused rendition of Queen of Candesce!)

All of the Virga books are available in audiobook format; The Sunless Countries will be as well.  And don't forget that Metatropolis, currently nominated for a Hugo Award, is also available from Audible.com

On Saturday, May 30, between 10:00 a.m and 3:00 p.m., I'll be selling my wares at the annual Earl Beatty Fun Fair & Ball Hockey Tournament.  I'll have rare hardcovers of Permanence and Lady of Mazes, and I'll be signing of course.

The fun fair's at 55 Woodington Avenue, Toronto, in the South-East playground. 

If you're good, they might even let you in the bouncey-castle.

Wolfram's Alpha is not a competitor to Google.  I've been playing with it since it went live the other night, and its limitations are glaring and clear.  It has trouble answering even the simplest and most intuitive query, which makes it seem like it's a spectacularly stupid system.  But what's impressive is that it is able to answer any questions at all.

If I understand Stephen Wolfram's description of the system (and others') correctly, Alpha is an attempt to create a knowledge engine out of a very large library of fairly small algorithms.  Its database is vast; but the code that operates on it is not necessarily complex.  In other words, Alpha's not a monolithic "thought engine" but a collection of heterogenous mini-engines that Wolfram hopes will interact in unpredictable but creative ways.  As Stephen Wolfram puts it in a recent blog entry on the subject:

There is an immensely complex web of systematizable knowledge out there in the world. And before NKS [Wolfram's book A New Kind of Science --K], I would have assumed that to handle something of this complexity would have required building a system that is somehow correspondingly complex—and in practice completely out of reach.

But from NKS we have learned that even highly complex things can have their origins in simple rules and simple programs.

This last statement is the important one--it speaks to what I've been saying for a while now, that the vision of a 'technological singularity' that comes as a result of increasing complexity of information processing systems, is mistaken.  (It is, in fact, an example of the erroneous theory of Intelligent Design.)  Creativity is not correlated to complexity; and as well as being a potentially useful tool, Alpha is an attempt to prove this very non-intuitive idea.

As Wolfram goes on to say in his blog post:

Today, Wolfram|Alpha uses existing models from science and other areas, then does computations based on these models.

But what if it could find new models? What if it could invent on the fly? Do science on the fly?

That is precisely what NKS suggests should be possible. Exploring the computational universe on request, and finding things out there that are useful for some particular specified purpose.

Stephen Wolfram expects Alpha to be more than a data regurgitator or formatter.  He expects it to be creative.  And, he expects this creativity to emerge, not from complexity, but from simplicity. 

These are very interesting ideas.  The next year of Alpha's growth should be interesting to watch.

The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculation is one of the most prestigious science fiction research collections in the world.  As part of the Toronto Public Library system, it's open to the public and is housed in a modern building in downtown Toronto (in between the University of Toronto campus and Chinatown).  I'm delighted to be able to say that I'll be Writer in Residence at the Merril between January and March of 2010.

This is a position of service to the public.  I'll be given time to work on my own material every day, but I'll also be making myself available to library visitors to discuss writing, review manuscripts, facilitate networking between prospective writers, and so on.

I'm very excited and honoured to be doing this, because twenty-three years ago, I arrived in Toronto by myself; didn't know anybody; and by chance heard about a local TPL branch called (then) the Spaced Out Library.  I showed up to discover that Judith Merril was currently writer in residence, and through her I was introduced to some of the best friends I've made in this lifetime.  The writer's workshop that Judy started at that time--I was there at the inaugural meeting--has been meeting once a week since 1987.  It's with great pride that I find myself coming full circle to become writer in residence at the very library that made my writing career possible.

I've had two books translated into Russian so far:  Ventus, and Sun of Suns.  Both are published by AST in Moscow, and are available online through the Ozon bookstore.  (For instance, here's the link to Sun of Suns, and here's where to find Ventus.)

The summary for Sun of Suns describes the book this way:

История Хайдена Гриффина - обычного мальчишки из искусственной галактике Вирга - огромного наполненного воздухом шара, в центре которого сияет Солнце Солнц, гигантский ядерный реактор - сад, где растут, как цисты, зародыши солнц поменьше.

История его родного мира, уничтоженного флотом "кочевой" планеты Слипстрим.

История его похищения и его странствий с космическими пиратами. История его опасных приключений - поисков легендарных сокровищ древнего капитана Анетина и смертельной борьбы с представителями цивилизации Искусственных сущностей, захватившей уже едва не все планеты за пределами Вирги...

And here's their description of Ventus:

...Вентус. Планета, на которой люди, веками остававшиеся рабами ИскИнов, поднимают наконец восстание против `хозяев`.

Вентус. Планета, на которой людям-повстанцам просто нечего терять!

Здесь сражаются до последнего.

До последнего вздоха. До последней пули.

Здесь цена выживания человечества проста: `Свобода - или смерть!`

I don't read Russian very well, but this seems to be a really over-the-top description--"here, they battle to the last breath!"  But hey.  If it sells books, go for it. 

But now I'm curious.  If anybody has read either or both of these translations, I'd love to know what you thought of them.  It's always really cool to find out, once the translation to a language is complete, how ideas and characters--and, well, just story--translate to other cultures.

After the success of the first SciBarCamp in Toronto, we're hosting another event here, this time in collaboration with Science Rendezvous.

SciBarCamp is a gathering of scientists, artists, and technologists for a day of talks and discussions.  The second SciBarCamp event will take place at Hart House at the University of Toronto on May 9th, 2009, with an opening reception on the evening of May 8th.  The goal is to create connections between science, entrepreneurs and local businesses, and arts and culture.

One of the topics we will be exploring this year is "Open Science", but we welcome any suggestions from participants. After all, in the tradition of BarCamps (see BarCamp.org for more information), the program is decided by the participants at the beginning of the meeting, in the opening reception on May 8th.  SciBarCamp will require active participation; while not everybody will present or lead a discussion, everybody will be expected to contribute substantially - this will help make it a really creative event.

To get an impression of what to expect at SciBarCamp, read this review about last year's event, or look at the list of blog posts by attendees.

Attendance is free, but there is only space for around 100 people, so please register by sending an email to Eva Amsen (eva.amsen@gmail.com) with your name and contact details.  Please include a link to your blog or your organization's webpage that we can display with your name on the participants list.

I noticed in adjusting the login that this site currently boasts 871 users.  Not bad!  The number of people who comment is low, however, and I'm pretty sure it's partly because having to log in every time you want to comment is a pain.  I was trying to create a Guest ID with low privileges this morning but couldn't get it to work right.  I'll keep trying.

Meanwhile, there's lots of features I could add to the site and probably will, given the time:  video feeds, Flickr-type photo collections, polls etc. 

...Of course, if you see me fiddling around in this way, it's a sure sign that I'm procrastinating, and you should probably tell me to get back to writing.

I don't read very many web-based comics.  I don't find many of them are very good.  So it's come as a surprise to me that I'm totally hooked on Tom Siddell's Gunnerkrigg Court, a Gormenghastian saga about a very strange school/factory/city and the enchanted and often sinister forest that lies next to it.

Antimony Carver is a new student at the school called Gunnerkrigg Court.  She's come from the hospital where she spent much of her sheltered youth watching her mother slowly wane and die.  Now, at the Court, she has the chance to make friends and learn how the world works.

Except that Antimony's world is far stranger than she (or we) could have imagined.  It's a madhouse of ghosts and robots, forest spirits and virtual classrooms; a school so huge and labyrinthine that whole neighbourhoods of it have remained unexplored for who-knows-how-long.  The story unfolds at a rate of three pages per week (updated on mondays, wednesdays and fridays) but as it's up to Chapter 22 and the chapters average 30 pages in length, there's plenty of reading to do to catch up.

I'm completely addicted.  I'm also delighted that you can now buy the first volume of the series on Amazon.  Siddell's work deserves wide recognition and praise.  Gunnerkrigg Court brightens up at least three days of my week, and for a writer and artist to be able to sustain such a high quality of output for so long is itself a feat worthy of recognition. 

All hail the Court, and three cheers for Antimony Carver!

I've created a Japanese page for Sun of Suns (太陽の日曜).  This is an experiment, so if there's anybody out there bilingual enough to interpret what I've done, please let me know if there's any howlers or flat-out insults accidentally rendered into the page.  I used WorldLingo.com's automated translation service, so I have no idea whether any of the text I've dropped in there makes sense. 

If this works, I'm going to create pages for each of the other translated languages/works. 

Solaren corporation has signed a deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to orbit a 200 megawatt solar power satellite by 2016.  I mention this not because the news is amazing (it was inevitable, really) but because their plan gives me some nice numbers to plug into my Verne gun calculations. 

You might remember my enthusiasm over Next Big Future's recent discussion of Project Orion and the spinoff notion of using nuclear bombs to loft very large payloads into space (wheeee!).  I called this idea the Verne gun in a feeble public relations attempt.  Anyway, Brian Wang's calculations over at NBF gave a figure of 280,000 tons as the lift-capacity of a single 10-megaton bomb.  At the time, I suggested using ten or so of these suckers to lift an entire continental powersat infrastructure into space.  But I didn't have hard numbers about how much mass equaled how much power.

Solaren have conveniently stated that their 200 megawatt, self-assembling power transmitter could go up in five launches of 25 tons each.  Solar power satellites are far more efficient per-solar-cell than ground-based plants, so they have a much smaller industrial footprint and almost no environmental footprint at all.  They run 24 hours a day.  So that means that the engineers at Solaren can do 200 megawatts of baseline power with 125 tons orbited.  To put it another way:

1 gigawatt baseline power = 625 orbited tons

Launching this much mass using conventional rockets is expensive, but obviously not entirely out of line, or they wouldn't be doing it.  But, here's a question:  how much baseline power (97% uptime) could be orbited using a 10 megaton Verne shot?  The answer: 448 gigawatts.  

The United States currently uses 4 terawatts of power per year.  About half of that is coal.  So four firings of the Verne gun could orbit enough power to obsolete the entire American coal-power system.

The big problem wouldn't be radiation from the launches (which would be effectively zero) but the astronomical insurance costs attendant on putting so many eggs in one launch basket.  Maybe a few dozen 100 kiloton shots would be better...

Here's the complete list under the Best Foreign Novel category.  As you can see, I'm in the best possible company this year; in fact, since these books are distilled from years of English-language SF rather than the Hugo's one-year pool, I'd venture to say that winning a Seiun is probably a lot harder than winning a Hugo.  Just look at this collection of titles!

• Spin, Robert Charles Wilson
• The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi
• Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds
• Light, M. John Harrison
• The Urth of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
• Sun of Suns, Karl Schroeder
• Seeker, Jack McDevitt

Note that the complete list of nominations doesn't seem to have been translated yet.  You can find ongoing updates on that here.

My thanks go out to Hayakawa Publishing for their excellent edition of Sun of Suns; and of course, a deep bow to Naoya Nakahara, whose translation is really what is being nominated here.

Paige, Janice, and myself had a fantastic time at Minicon last weekend.  I have to say the friendliness of the people and casual atmosphere of the event made GOH-ing an absolutely delightful experience.  Keith and Andra, Matt, Joel and Beth, Sharon, David and 7--you all made us feel well taken care of and, personally, made me feel like I was the one being entertained rather than me being the main entertainer. 

Minneapolis itself is a great city.  Janice and Paige emerged blinking from the depths of the Mall of America carrying various treasures, and I was reminded of my last visit which was also very pleasant. 

Minicon is a great convention, and if you're at all in the neighbourhood next year you should definitely drop in.  We will whenever we can.

We'll be at Minicon April 10-12, and I hope you can join us!  Here's what I'll be up to--although, as always, feel free to approach me in the halls, dealer's room, or where-ever if you want to chat or want me to sign something.  We're really looking forward to the weekend, and your participation will make it that much better!

Note:  it's a light schedule, since I'm still recovering from my surgery--but I'm doing pretty well these days, and hope to be around and available most of the time.

Schedule

Steampunk: the Romance of Science

Saturday 2:30

Krushenko’s

Sharon Kahn(m), Karl Schroeder, Richard Mueller, Dorf, Ceridwen Christensen

 What is Steampunk: a literary movement, an attitude, or merely fashion statement? Perhaps there is something about the buoyant spirit of the late 19th century that speaks to our feelings about technology today.

Interview and Signing: Author GoH

Saturday 7:00

Veranda 5/6

Rick Brignall(interviewer), Karl Schroeder

 Our author Guest of Honor talks about his life and his work. After the interview there will be a book signing  in the same space and a chance to chat with Karl one on one.

Breaking into publishing in the 21st Century

Sunday 10:00

Veranda 3/4

Michael Merriam(m), Karl Schroeder, Scott McCoy, Rob Callahan, Rick Brignall

An update of the perennially popular "Publishing 101" topic. What do you as a new writer need to know to get your big break? How is the process changing with the advent of printing on demand, audio books, and the paperback publishing industry in a state of freefall? Last year's advice on how to break into the business may already be obsolete

Second Foundation Discussion: The Works of Karl Schroeder

Sunday  11:30

Krushenko’s

Eric M. Heideman(m), Karl Schroeder, John Till, Greg L. Johnson

 Come and talk with the Author GOH about his work! Sponsored by Second Foundation, a speculative and science fiction-book discussion group that has met regularly since 1983 (see also Sunday evening, Krushenko's Annex)

 Hope to see you there!

The folks over at Audible.com are thrilled that the METAtropolis project has garnered a Hugo nomination--this is, after all, the first audiobook-first SF work to be so honoured.  To celebrate, and to give us a bit more of a fighting chance against the blockbuster films we're up against in our category, Audible is giving away METAtropolis to all comers.

Just head over to Audible.com and sign up (whether you follow through on your subscription later is your business), and you'll get a free download of METAtropolis.  Considering that this gets you novella-length works by four of the hottest names in SF plus myself, and considering that you get nine hours of entertainment, this ain't such a bad deal.  In fact, throw in the fact that several of the stories are read by the best actors currently on the SF scene (think Galactica) and you'd be crazy not to take advantage of the deal.

Available now and for a limited time, Dave Seeley is selling signed prints of his wondrous cover for The Books of Virga.  Needless to say I have one myself, and it's quite striking, with very deep colours and dark blacks.  And yes, the expression on Venera's face is priceless.

Dave is selling these prints over at his online store.  As you'll see when you get there, he's got a world of other great art for sale as well.  I'd been hoping to get Dave to do some cover art for me for years, and was delighted last fall when this opportunity came up.  I think he's captured the madcap pace of Sun of Suns as well as the conniving personality of Venera Fanning quite well. 

And yeah, I want one of those racing bikes.