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Downloads

I've made my first novel, Ventus, available as a free download, as well as excerpts from two of the Virga books.  I am looking forward to putting up a number of short stories in the near future.

Complete novel:  Ventus

 

To celebrate the August, 2007 publication of Queen of Candesce, I decided to re-release my first novel as an eBook. You can download it from this page. Ventus was first published by Tor Books in 2000, and and you can still buy it; to everyone who would just like to sample my work, I hope you enjoy this version.

I've released this book under a Creative Commons license, which means you can read it and distribute it freely, but not make derivative works or sell it.

Book Excerpts:  Sun of Suns and Pirate Sun

I've made large tracts of these two Virga books available.  If you want to find out what the Virga universe is all about, you can check it out here:

Major Foresight Project:  Crisis in Zefra

In spring 2005, the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada (that is to say, the army) hired me to write a dramatized future military scenario.  The book-length work, Crisis in Zefra, was set in a mythical African city-state, about 20 years in the future, and concerned a group of Canadian peacekeepers who are trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency.  The project ran to 27,000 words and was published by the army as a bound paperback book.

If you'd like to read Crisis in Zefra, you can download it in PDF form.

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Lady of Mazes

In a review at scifi.com, Paul Witcover described Lady of Mazes this way:

Lady of MazesFar in the future, the vast ringworld of Teven Coronal—located in the Lethe Nebula, an enigmatic region of space beyond Jupiter—is home to millions of post-humans who occupy a spectrum of overlapping but distinct realities called manifolds. Each manifold is a culture unto itself, with a unique history, mythology and technology, its members the living expression of a particular Worldview determined hundreds of years ago by all-but-mythical founders. The manifolds are enabled by programmable matter and neural implants that give access to the virtual realities of "inscape," where human minds interface with AIs; software controls called "tech locks" either prevent the inhabitants of the various manifolds from physically or virtually interacting, or, conversely, under strictly controlled conditions, permit such interaction, all the while maintaining the integrity of the various Worldviews.

Some manifolds, like Westerhaven, are cosmopolitan, embracing social and technological complexity, including a self-confident curiosity about the cultures of "neighboring" manifolds, while others, like Raven, follow a more insular weltanschauung, eschewing overt technology in favor of an existence ostensibly closer to nature, not blinding themselves to the advanced technology that makes their lives possible but choosing to cast that technology and its effects in other terms.

One morning, Livia Kodaly, a young musician and singer of Westerhaven, is enticed into Raven by an adventurous older friend, Lucius Xavier, to investigate rumors of "Impossibles"—anomalies that somehow escape the censorship of the tech locks. There they witness the appearance of strangers who claim to be the mythical ancestors of Raven's people, returned bearing Impossible gifts. In the ensuing confusion, Lucius disappears, and a terrified Livia flees to Westerhaven.

It soon becomes clear that the ancestors are invaders, come to "bring your people out of their fantasy-land and back to reality." Somehow these outsiders, followers of something or someone called 3340, are able to dissolve not only manifolds but the tech locks themselves. Livia, her best friend, Aaron, and a Raven refugee named Qiingi launch themselves from the besieged coronal in an unlikely spaceship, hoping to find help. Instead, they find the Archipelago. Based on an inscape without tech locks, the Archipelago is made up of post-humans more or less like Livia, godlike beings who were once human but are no longer, powerful AIs representing the government and factions of the populace, and even more powerful AIs called anecliptics, remote and enigmatic denizens of the Lethe Nebula who may be responsible for it and the coronals floating there, including Teven Coronal.

Livia and the others are soon drawn in to the Byzantine politics of the Archipelago, where the invisible hand of the anecliptics assures a sterile peace and order. Only the Good Book, a role-playing system of subtle self-organizing potential, seems to offer humans a chance of escaping the anecliptics' benign control. But the Good Book is more than it seems, and discovery of its secret leads Livia back to Teven Coronal and an apocalyptic confrontation with 3340.

A Prequel to Ventus

If Ventus is the tale of the fallout from the death of a "god" (the rogue AI 3340), then Lady of Mazes is the story of 3340's birth.  There is almost no other overlap between the two stories, because their events occur several centuries apart. They share thematic elements; but where the big ideas in Ventus involved nanotech AI in a low-tech world, Lady of Mazes is a tour de force of far-future science and technology.  Among other things, you'll find:

  •  Vast orbiting ringworld structures with the surface area of Europe, but built using technology that's actually possible;
  • A civilization so powerful it engages in the systematic dismantling of the sun for building materials;
  • Three distinct visions of what the future of political institutions might look like;
  • Swordfights, escapes and chases galore;
  • A world of shifting realities where each citizen inhabits their own 'narrative', a customized virtual reality of solipsistic intensity;
  • Livia Kodaly, a young woman with an extraordinary past that she wants only to live down, who is called upon to exceed even her own legend in order to save her people.

 What the Critics Said

"A novel of high ambition executed with the talent and imagination to match."

Scifi.com

"Head-snappingly cool SF."

SF Site

"Lady of Mazes possesses the best elements of modern science fiction: deft characterization, engaging storytelling, and far-flung future possibilities that touch upon present-day issues. Most impressive of all, Schroeder accomplishes all of this in under 300 pages. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more of Schroeder's work."

SFFWorld

 

“Bulging with complex ideas and extrapolations … amazing."

—Kirkus Reviews

 

“The interrelationship between technology and philosophy that informs [Livia's] choice gives depth and breadth to a book that many will want to reread to get all the nuances.”

—Publishers Weekly

 

“Schroeder continues to improve his unique blend of hard SF and vivid, dreamlike prose and bids fair to become a major genre voice.”

—Booklist

 

“His lively writing style and cutting-edge visions combine to deliver a topnotch story.”

—Library Journal

Spanish Edition

La senora de las LabyrintosI basically wrote Lady of Mazes for Europe.  I thought that of all people, Europeans would understand what I was getting at when I talked about a world of customizable realities and a technology of cultural preservation.  Canadians too, I hasten to add; I was lamenting aloud about the death of the counterculture to a Quebecois friend of mine, and he said, "The counterculture isn't dead.  It's other countries."  (This statement will make perfect sense to the Quebecois, and to Europeans and pretty well anybody in the world--except Anglos and particularly mainstream Americans--because everywhere in the world must constantly compare their own cultural productions to those of America.  It's not a bad thing, necessarily; it's just something we're all aware of all the time.)

So I'm delighted that thanks to the staff at the Factory of Ideas, and the hard work of my translator, Virginia Sanmartín LópezLady of Mazes is now available in Spanish, from a variety of booksellers includingcasadellibro.com and IberLibro.com.  It's also getting good reviews--for instance this one in Literatura Prospectiva and this one by LiteRatos.  (Both reviews acknowledge that it's a difficult read, and that, of course, was the case for many people with the English edition, too.  I refused to dumb down this book.)

One thing that particularly delights me, for no reason, is that the round-trip translation through Google of Lady of Mazes, to La Senora de los Laberintos and back to English, is The Lady of the Labyrinths.  Which, perhaps even better than my original, indicates just who it is I'm alluding to here.

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About Me

I'm a member of the Association of Professional Futurists with my own consultancy, and am also currently Chair of the Canadian node of the Millennium Project, a private/public foresight consultancy active in 50 nations. As well, I am an award-winning author with ten published novels translated into as many languages. I write, give talks, and conduct workshops on numerous topics related to the future, including:

  • Future of government
  • Bitcoin and digital currencies
  • The workplace in 2030
  • The Internet of Things
  • Augmented cognition

For a complete bio, go here. To contact me, email karl at kschroeder dot com

Example: The Future of Governance

I use Science Fiction to communicate the results of actual futures studies. Some of my recent research relates to how we'll govern ourselves in the future. I've worked with a few clients on this and published some results.

Here are two examples--and you can read the first for free:

The Canadian army commissioned me to write Crisis in Urlia, a fictionalized study of the future of military command-and-control. You can download a PDF of the book here:


Crisis in Urlia

For the "optimistic Science Fiction" anthology Hieroglyph, I wrote "Degrees of Freedom," set in Haida Gwaii. "Degrees of Freedom" is about an attempt to develop new governing systems by Canadian First Nations people.


I'm continuing to research this exciting area and would be happy to share my findings.

 
Science Fiction that's about something

“Bulging with complex ideas and extrapolations … amazing."
—Kirkus Reviews
“The interrelationship between technology and philosophy that informs [Livia's] choice gives depth and breadth to a book that many will want to reread to get all the nuances.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Schroeder continues to improve his unique blend of hard SF and vivid, dreamlike prose and bids fair to become a major genre voice.”
—Booklist

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Coming on June 18, 2019

"Science fiction at its best."

--Kim Stanley Robinson

A Young Adult Scifi Saga

"Lean and hugely engaging ... and highly recommended."

--Open Letters Monthly, an Arts and Literature Review

Sheer Fun: The Virga Series

(Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce are combined in Cities of the Air)


 “An adventure-filled tale of sword fights and naval battles... the real fun of this coming-of-age tale includes a pirate treasure hunt and grand scale naval invasions set in the cold, far reaches of space. ”
Kirkus Reviews (listed in top 10 SF novels for 2006)

"With Queen of Candesce, [Schroeder] has achieved a clockwork balance of deftly paced adventure and humour, set against an intriguing and unique vision of humanity's far future.
--The Globe and Mail

"[Pirate Sun] is fun in the same league as the best SF ever has had to offer, fully as exciting and full of cool science as work from the golden age of SF, but with characterization and plot layering equal to the scrutiny of critical appraisers."
--SFRevu.com


"...A rollicking good read... fun, bookish, and full of insane air battles"
--io9.com


"A grand flying-pirate-ship-chases-and-escapes-and-meetings-with-monsters adventure, and it ends not with a debate or a seminar but with a gigantic zero-gee battle around Candesce, a climactic unmasking and showdown, just desserts, and other satisfying stuff."
--Locus