Tor.com has officially unveiled its summer lineup for 2018, and The Million is now slated for release on August 14.  Here's a link to the announcement.  I'm looking forward to people's reactions to this one--I had particular fun imagining this world of outrageous wealth and power.  What a great setting for a story about betrayal, deception and disguises--and, of course, school!

Here's my Boskone schedule for 2018:

Technology and the Crisis of Conscience

Format: Panel

17 Feb 2018, Saturday 10:00 - 11:00, Marina 4 (Westin)

Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. Characters like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Masamune Shirow's Major demonstrate some consequences of the headlong pursuit of scientific breakthroughs. What are the real stakes in the playing-god game? Will we use technological advances for good or evil? What will guide us? And how does fiction help inform our ethical dilemmas?

Pete Hollmer, Karl Schroeder, JeffWarner (M), LJ Cohen, Cady Coleman

Colonialism and the New Space Race

Format: Panel

17 Feb 2018, Saturday 11:00 - 12:00, Burroughs (Westin)

European expansion into the American West and other "new frontiers" used to be portrayed as a great adventure — and a civilizing enterprise. For those being invaded, however, colonial expansion has been less pleasant. The Space Act of 2015 allows the commercialization of space by private entities. But if powerful technocrats like Elon Musk use tropes from Westerns to promote Mars exploration, will we venture into space with the same old colonialist attitudes? Or can we learn from history, and approach space exploration with new mindsets?

Allen M. Steele (M), Vandana Singh, Pete Hollmer, Karl Schroeder, William Hayashi

Modern Marvels

Format: Panel

17 Feb 2018, Saturday 15:00 - 16:00, Burroughs (Westin)

Our panelists consider their favorite gadgets, and list their Top 10 — including landmark examples from the past, as well as modern gadgets that are currently changing the future.

Priscilla Olson (M), Karl Schroeder, Geary Gravel, Daniel P. Dern, Carrie Cuinn

Reading by Karl Schroeder

Format: Reading

17 Feb 2018, Saturday 16:30 - 17:00, Griffin (Westin)

Karl Schroeder

Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder

Format: Kaffeeklatsch

17 Feb 2018, Saturday 17:00 - 18:00, Harbor I - Kaffeeklatsch 2 (Westin)

Karl Schroeder

The Future of Work

Format: Panel

18 Feb 2018, Sunday 11:00 - 12:00, Marina 2 (Westin)

How has innovation — changing technologies, new digital platforms, advanced AIs — altered the fundamental nature of work? While humans may always have a place in the labor hierarchy, just where will we find ourselves on the food chain? Is there room for everyone? Specifically, how will technology eliminate current jobs and enable new ones?

Mark L. Olson (M), Karl Schroeder, James Cambias, Jeff Hecht, B. Diane Martin

Hope to see you there!

If you're thinking about wealth in terms of money, you're just not thinking big enough.  This was one of the principles I decided to run with when I set out to write The Million.  I mean, this is a story about the literal inheritors of the Earth--the culmination of human civilization, distilled down to a population small enough to prevent the extinction of the species, and large enough to permit diversity, creativity and ambition to flourish.  One million people, who have inherited all human history, all human art, all our accomplishments, our homelands, cities, technology and, yes, money.

Think of The Million as Downton Abbey without the servants.  In the future, after all, we assume robots and AI that serve us hand and foot.  You want an suborbital spaceplane?  How about a whole air force of them that can do aerobatics around you while you fly yours?  You want a yacht?  Why not a migratory island?

No amount of thinking big is big enough for understanding the ordinary lives of the Million. Just one teaser:  while you're drowsing in bed, not yet fully awake, an army of bots has fanned out across the land, looking for individual stands of ripened wild wheat.  By the time you're blinking at the cathedral ceiling of your bed-chamber, they've picked thousands of wheat seeds, judged them and selected the best, and have ground them into flour.  When you finally stagger downstairs, thinking about the temporary city your cousin built for last night's party, with its crowds of fake humans revelers, the smell of fresh baked bread entices you to the kitchen where you see the newly cut loaf... and decide to have something else instead.

The one thing you won't be doing, as a citizen of the Million, is going online.  Or watching television.  Why watch a recorded program--so gauche!--when you can summon a set of robot players to perform the thing on sets built just-in-time by your other army of carpenters?  Why play a first-person shooter on a console when you can have a city neighborhood built to play out a raid for real?  Or, when it comes to romance--well, the possibilities are endless.

So:  forget money.  Forget the whole concept of wealth, it no longer applies. 

What does still apply, even in this world, though, are jealousy, envy, pride, ambition, and deceit.

What's all the wealth in the world worth, after all, if you can't conspire against your neighbours...?

The XPrize Foundation has sponsored a new, visionary time-travel anthology that you can read online--and contribute to!  It's called Seat 14C, and you can enter your own story to join myself and a stellar cast of SF greats as we explore the world twenty years in the future.

My own story's called The Urge To Jump, and it's about adventurers doing a High Altitude High Opening parachute jump onto the back of a mile-wide aerostat (high altitude balloon) in the South Pacific.  For the bounty... and a chance to build themselves a new home.

Come join us on the flight, there's one seat left.

Once again I'll be attending Boskone, which in 2017 is happening from February 17 to the 19th.  I'll be around from Friday to Sunday, but my main programming is concentrated on the last two days.  

The following schedule is subject to change, but it should give you an idea of where I'll be and when:

Immersive Technology

Saturday 13:00 - 14:00, Marina 3 (Westin)

The first computers took up rooms and had languages invented so we could “talk” to them. We now can control mobile phones through hand gestures. Will the next phase be a direct human-computer connection? Will virtual or augmented reality become common in our daily lives? Might we lose ourselves within our technology?

Great Cities of SF/F/H

Saturday 15:00 - 16:00, Marina 3 (Westin)

On Mercury, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Terminator moves on giant tracks to stay ahead of dawn. Fran Wilde’s unnamed urb spears its towers of living bone far above the clouds. China Mieville’s Armada is basically a big bunch of pirate houseboats. What’s your favorite skiffy metropolis? By 2045, 6 billion people may live in cities here on Earth. What will that be like?

Autographing: Linda Addison, Ken Altabef, David McDonald, Karl Schroeder

Saturday 16:00 - 17:00, Galleria-Autographing (Westin)

Reading by Karl Schroeder

Sunday 10:30 - 11:00, Reading - Griffin (Westin)

Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder

Sunday 11:00 - 12:00, Harbor I-Kaffeeklatsch 2 (Westin)

A new year, a new publication.  I've been flying under the radar lately, with nothing of note published in 2016; in part this was due to the passing of my editor, David Hartwell, and some ensuing career chaos.  Partly, though, it's just been luck:  I've been writing and selling stories--even finished a new novella recently--but events have conspired to push back publication dates for multiple projects.  Some of those projects are on hold, others--tied up in sinister government appropriations mazes--are in doubt entirely.  

After Lockstep I started a blitz of stories about next-generation government and economics.  I followed through on that promise, writing and selling multiple pieces over the past year or so.  None of them have appeared--until this week.

David Brin has been bravely fighting a battle for greater governmental and societal transparency for many years now.  He's now assembled a roster of heavy-hitters in the fabulous new anthology Chasing Shadows.  My story, "Eminence," is about First Nations seccessionists, potlatch cryptocurrencies, fully homomorphic encryption, and other parts of the computational plumbing that will either set us all free over the next few decades, or consign us to a hell of state surveillance far worse than Orwell's darkest nightmares.  I choose to be optimistic, but I suspect the battle will be a close one.  The more we all know about what's at stake and the strange adventures we may all undergo on the way to one of those fates, the better.  Hence this story.

I hope you enjoy "Eminence," and I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.