364 Quotes by Charles Stross

I suspect losing paper maps but gaining GPS and online maps is a similar step function: maps still exist, but they're vastly more useful, not to say permanently up to date, in their new form. Again, I won't be shedding any tears, but I'll keep a paper road atlas in the back of my car for another few years, I think, Just In Case.

Science fiction was rocket-mad for about 40 years until aerospace hit a brick wall about 1970. I would not write off space colonisation or exploration completely, but we are profoundly ill adapted for going boldly into outer space.

I grew up on second hand bookshops and libraries.

Science fiction has traditionally been economically naive, with a strong libertarian streak, which I think is like a crude Leninism. That's attractive because it could be used to explain everything, and if only we lived by its tenets, everything would be perfect.

I have not watched the TV show. I do not generally watch TV sci-fi drama shows. They make me itch.

Pubs are, disturbingly, where I hatch most of my best idea-sculptures: possibly it's something to do with the disinhibiting effects of alcohol, or maybe it's just having company to yack at.

Personal pride is probably a bad guide to merit.

Novels are one of the few remaining areas of narrative storytelling where one person does almost all of the creative heavy lifting.

I'd like to be proven wrong firstly on the difficulty of building a self-sustaining closed circuit ecosystem in space that can support human life.