Here's my schedule.  I'm not going to be in Dublin very long, so I'm going to prioritize meeting people and socializing over sightseeing.  You can expect to find me around the con most of the time from Thursday afternoon to Sunday.

Autographs: Thursday at 14:00

15 Aug 2019, Thursday 14:00 - 14:50, Level 4 Foyer (CCD)

Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder

16 Aug 2019, Friday 13:00 - 13:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)

Reading: Karl Schroeder

16 Aug 2019, Friday 15:00 - 15:20, Liffey Room-3 (Readings) (CCD)

Space opera is for robots; soap opera is for people

Format: Panel

17 Aug 2019, Saturday 10:00 - 10:50, Liffey Hall-2 (CCD)

Will humans ever live long-term in space, or is it easier to let our ‘mind children’ go to the stars, whether as uploaded minds or independent intelligences? If humans (or AI) leave for space, would we miss them?

Lauren James (Walker Books) (M),  Diane Duane (The Owl Springs Partnership), Karl Schroeder (Tor Books), Laurence Raphael Brothers

What I learned along the way

Format: Panel

17 Aug 2019, Saturday 15:00 - 15:50, Wicklow Room-3 (CCD)

Writing is a many wondrous thing filled with highs and lows, but those lows can be really tough to navigate either after a great success or after a lack of success. Rejection is something every writer has to face, but how do writers keep writing in the face of failure? What lessons have they learned along the way? Our panellists share the ups and downs of a writing life.

Aliette de Bodard, Ian R MacLeod (M), Karl Schroeder (Tor Books), George Sandison (Titan Books), Nina Allan

Over at Locus, Paul di Filippo has this to say about Stealing Worlds:

There are a handful of SF writers whose novels are both vastly entertaining and which also serve as engineer-level blueprints for refashioning the world. In this category I would put Kim Stanley Robinson, Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and Charles Stross. Now, with a shift in his focus from far futures to near horizons, I would add the name of Karl Schroeder.

Read the rest of the review and see if you agree!

Cory likes this book.  He says of it,

This is a fucking great novel, full of amazing characters racing around fascinating settings, doing battle, parkouring through surveillance grids, falling in love, betraying each other, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. It's everything you could want from a Karl Schroeder novel, and it's the best Karl Schroeder novel ever (so far).

Head over to Tor.com and you can read an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Stealing Worlds, which hits the shelves on June 18. In this clip, Sura is dusting off old skills--breaking into the former family home...

Early Reviews

“Lesser writers use technology as a metaphor; Schroeder is a master of rigor in technological speculation. Part prophet, part critic, Schroeder is a hell of a storyteller.”―Cory Doctorow

“Karl Schroeder seizes cyberpunk traditions and larps them into the onrushing era of blockchains, sentient contracts and rapid-paced convulsions of reality!”―David Brin, author of The Postman and Existence.

I'll be in Vienna in early April, speaking at the European Digital Media Awards ceremony. To get a sense of the flavour of the upcoming talk, I was interviewed by journalist Chris Sutcliffe.  You can read the interview here.

An excerpt:

“It’s funny: I’ve included augmented reality in my stories for 20 years now. As it finally becomes a viable technology, I find myself doubting it more and more. At first it seemed natural and convenient that we should want to explode the images and interfaces currently inside our screens out onto the physical world. But that may be a terrible idea for a number of reasons...

Boskone is held at the Boston Weston Waterfront, close to all the best action in downtown Boston.  I'm flying in Thursday night so I'll be available to chat, sign and read from Friday afternoon onwards. 

Here's my final schedule. What's on here matches closes my current obsessions, and a lot of these topics are front and center in Stealing Worlds.  So expect me to be vocal, opinionated, and engaged!

The Most Alien Aliens

15 Feb 2019, Friday 16:00 - 16:50, Burroughs (Westin)

How can you design a really GOOD alien? How can writers/artists imbue their creations with a genuine sense of otherness? What do our depictions of aliens tell us about ourselves?

James Cambias, Dr. Stephen P. Kelner Jr. (Ascent Leadership Networks) (M), Jeffrey A. Carver, Laurence Raphael Brothers (Freelance), Karl Schroeder

Near-Future SF

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 12:00 - 12:50, Harbor II (Westin)

1984 was published in 1949. 2001: A Space Odyssey was published in 1968. Neither was predictive ... at least for the year they were putatively about. Should science fiction set in the near future try to be prophetic? Can it avoid becoming dated? Does it always have to be dystopic? There’s a lot of it out there these days, but what makes a near-future story successful?

Fran Wilde, Michael Swanwick, Karl Schroeder, Paul Di Filippo (M), Brett James

Economics in SF/F Worlds

Format: Panel

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 14:00 - 14:50, Burroughs (Westin)

Whether you deal in coin, platinum, electronic credits, or chickens, all societies rest upon an agreed-upon economic foundation. However, fantastic fiction rarely features a reference to any body that establishes and monitors a financial system. How important is it to see a working (or failing) economy in an SF/F world? Can you realistically have a cashless society (Star Trek) or a civilization run by orcs (LOTR)? What are the economic drivers that keep these worlds turning? Fellowships that cross multiple borders to throw away precious metal objects so rarely pay well. How do our heroes and villains survive without visible incomes of any kind?

MR Richardson (Room 10 Publishing) (M), Fonda Lee, Karl Schroeder , Steve Miller (Liaden Universe), Mr. Walter H. Hunt (Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts)

Reading by Karl Schroeder

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 15:00 - 15:25, Griffin (Westin)

Autographing: James Cambias, Daniel M. Kimmel, Bracken MacLeod, Karl Schroeder

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 16:00 - 16:50, Galleria - Autographing (Westin)

Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 17:00 - 17:50, Galleria - Kaffeeklatsch 1 (Westin)

If Only It Were Real

16 Feb 2019, Saturday 20:00 - 20:50, Griffin (Westin)

What science fiction concept, other than space travel, would you most like to see realized? Flying cars? Matter replicators? Time travel? Why? What would be the impact on civilization of this wish fulfillment? Flying cars crashing into buildings, replicators putting manufacturers out of business, time travelers running wild, oh my!

Alan Brown (M), Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Mary Anne Mohanraj (Speculative Literature Foundation), Karl Schroeder

The Limits of Automation

17 Feb 2019, Sunday 10:00 - 10:50, Burroughs (Westin)

When, how, why, what? Following up on last year's "The Future of Work" ... How far can we reasonably project that automation of jobs will advance in the real world in the next 10 years? Why? What limits to automation are presently visible? What plausible limits have we not yet encountered? What about the longer term? What jobs can we reasonably expect will be completely automatable in years to come? We'll focus on technical aspects, not so much on societal acceptance, and not at all on societal impact.

Mark Olson (M), Jeff Hecht, Karl Schroeder, Laurence Raphael Brothers (Freelance), Brianna Wu

When Robots Take Over (Our Jobs)

17 Feb 2019, Sunday 11:00 - 11:50, Burroughs (Westin)

Twentieth-century history shows that automation can increase productivity and stimulate new employment. More recent developments, however, haven't always been so productive or stimulating (e.g., grocery store self-checkouts). Are we nearing a point of no return — when technological advances chiefly function to replace human labor? What happens to society once work gets scarce, and stays that way? And what might the transition to that brave new (jobless) world entail?

Mark Olson (M), Karl Schroeder, B. Diane Martin, John P. Murphy, Brianna Wu