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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.
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.
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:
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.
Support the community by nominating for SF's biggest award
The annual Hugo awards will be held in Montreal this year, at Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon. If you've been thinking of attending, the window for doing so and also nominating for the award is closing rapidly. In fact, you have until February 28th to nominate. You need a Hugo PIN number to do it, which you can only get by having a Worldcon membership; the problem is that PIN numbers have been trickling out rather slowly, so if you don't have a membership and want to nominate, you'd better hurry!
The online Hugo nomination form is on the Anticipation website, as is a registration page. If you can't attend the convention but would like to nominate for the Hugo, you can buy a supporting membership for US$50 or CAN$55.
Montreal's a fun city, and I hope to see you there this year.
UPDATE: Apparently you had to buy your membership by January 31st to be eligible to nominate. My bad.
This weekend in Troy, Michigan--don't miss it
Here's what I'll be up to this weekend at ConFusion. (For complete details of location etc., click the link under Upcoming Events on the right of this window.)
Saturday, January 24
10:00 AM
Salon E LITERARY - Playing with Genre Conventions (1 hr.)
Tobias Buckell, Jim Hines, Karl Schroeder, Doselle Young and Jim Frenkel [M] How can we take the mundane and shopworn conventions of science fiction, fantasy and horror and reinvent them?
Noon
Salon H LITERARY - Setting: Haven't I been here before? (1 hr.)
Violette Malan [M], Karl Schroeder, Catherine Shaffer, Doselle Young and Jim Frenkel How important is setting to a reader's understanding and enjoyment of the story? Is setting the real difference between S and SF? Are we overusing the settings we have, and are there any new ones?
3:00 PM
Salon E LITERARY - Big Brother is Watching You! (1 hr.)
Cory Doctorow, David Rozian, Steve Buchheit, Karl Schroeder [M], Catherine Shaffer Personal privacy in the electronic age we now have or will have chips on everything we own including pets, where is this all going? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?
4:00 PM
Salon E LITERARY - Meet the New Medium (1 hr.)
Cat Rambo, Tobias Buckell [M], Karl Schroeder and Dave Klecha Games are as much a part of the younger generations entertainment mix as books writing for/about games.
5:00 PM
Salon E MASS AUTHOR AUTOGRAPH SESSION
After a little bit of set-up Cryptic ConFusion's authors will be lined up to sign your books.
Sunday, January 25
10:00 AM
Salon G LITERARY - Wuffies? Total meltdown? Libertarianism? (1 hr.)
Cory Doctorow, Paul Melko [M], Karl Schroeder and Mathew Stewart-Fulton The actual future of economics what are some current ideas on where the world economy is headed.
I'm excited to be asked to be GOH--and pumped that Stephan Martiniere, my cover artist, will be Artist GOH
I'll be GOH at Minicon, Minnesota's longest-running science fiction convention, over Easter weekend, 2009. Past GOH's include luminaries such as Gordon R. Dickson, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven and Jack Vance. I'm honored to be in their company!
Minicon is an annual gathering of science fiction and fantasy fans sponsored by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society (Minn-StF). The convention is held each year in or near Minneapolis, Minnesota over Easter weekend. The convention has been running annually (and sometimes twice a year!) since 1968.
Hope to see you there!
Circumstances beyond my control have forced me to cancel my appearances at Denvention
Unfortunately, I also have to cancel my upcoming visit to Ann Arbor to frolic with Tobias Buckell and John Scalzi; we were all going to celebrate the releases of our respective novels, but you guys will have to party without me this time. My apologies to everyone who was hoping to see me, and sorry as well that I couldn't have done it sooner than a week before the convention; but I didn't know this was going to happen myself until a couple of days ago.
I'll update the Events page of my site as soon as I know when my next appearances will be.
I'll be at Worldcon in Denver. Drop in and see me!
Here's my schedule for the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, which happens August 6-10, in Denver Colorado. It's a pretty modest schedule, but when you realize that there's several hundred programming guests and only a limited set of slots--well, I don't know very many other midlist writers who have any more panels than this. In that sense, Worldcon is a victim of its own success; but I'm not complaining, because people will still be able to find me, and the Kaffeeklatsch and reading should be fun.
If you want to see me outside of this schedule, just email me and we can talk.
Many photos taken--getting them off the camera is proving difficult
So I finally got to meet Sean Williams; he and I were on a couple of panels yesterday and today with Ken MacLeod, Robin Pen and Jonathon Strahan, talking about space opera (go figure!). Sean and I went for lunch together today (which is tomorrow for you reading this in North America) at a very nice Indian restaurant on the corner, and talked shop happily until my panel at 2:00 when I did a very interesting panel on "Painting the Future Green" with Zara Baxter, Margaret Dunlop, and Tiki, whose last name I didn't catch, a media analyst from the east coast.
I'd be uploading loads of photos to add to this post, except that my laptop has decided not to recognize SD cards, so I have to find a workaround to get them off my camera.
While we're waiting on that little technical glitch, here's a couple of previously uploaded shots: the entrance to King's Park, in downtown Perth, and a glorious sunrise taken in the countryside northeast of Geraldton.
Meanwhile, back in Canada, there's been heavy blogging activity around SciBarCamp. The buzz is building that we might do another, and people who were mildly interested before are now keenly curious. This was exactly the outcome we were hoping for.
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:
For a complete bio, go here. To contact me, email karl at kschroeder dot com
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:
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 at its best."
--Kim Stanley Robinson
"Lean and hugely engaging ... and highly recommended."
--Open Letters Monthly, an Arts and Literature Review
(Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce are combined in Cities of the Air)
βAn 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. β
βKirkus 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