Talk:Charles Stross/Archive 1

Archive 1

Series

Should we note which series a given book is in? Specifically, I'm looking at the Merchant Princes & the follow-ups to the Atrocity Archive(s) & Singularity Sky. - Pronoiac 08:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I attempted two mockups including series as part of the tables, but they were ugly.

Standalones

• Scratch Monkey, unpublished, 1993
• The Web Architect's Handbook (Non-fiction), published 1996, ISBN 0-201-87735-X
• Toast: And Other Rusted Futures, published 2002, ISBN 1-58715-413-7
• Accelerando, published 2005, ISBN 0-441-01284-1
• Glasshouse, published 2006, ISBN 0-441-01403-8
• Missile Gap, 2007, ISBN 1-59606-058-1
• Halting State, forthcoming 2007

Eschaton series

• Singularity Sky, published 2003, ISBN 0-441-01072-5
• Iron Sunrise, published 2004, ISBN 1-84149-335-X
• (title to be announced), forthcoming 2008

The Atrocity Archive series

• The Atrocity Archives, published 2004, ISBN 1-930846-25-8
• The Jennifer Morgue, forthcoming 2006, ISBN 1-930846-44-4

Merchant Princes series

• The Family Trade, published 2004, ISBN 0-7653-0929-7
• The Hidden Family, published 2005, ISBN 0-7653-1347-2
• The Clan Corporate, published 2006, ISBN 0-7653-0930-0
• The Merchant's Revolution (provisional title), forthcoming 2007
• The Revolution Business forthcoming April 14, 2009

The sixth book ("The Trade of Queens") should appear in 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.181.67 (talk) 13:10, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

- Pronoiac 17:11, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Problems on the page

• Why does "Glasshouse" link gets redirected to "Accelerando"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.188.56.24 (talk) 20:12, 10 March 2007 (UTC).
• Where does "On Her Majesty's Occult Service" fit in, anyone read it already? 131.107.0.73 22:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

It's an omnibus edition of Atrocity Archives and Jennifer Morgue, I believe. Shimgray | talk | 23:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Should it be listed under the Bob Howard - Laundry series with a notation that it's an omnibus of the two earlier books? 205.238.220.186 23:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I put it under the new category omnibus books for now. -Pronoiac 06:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Touring calendar

Anyone know where there's a calendar of where Charlie will be?? I can't find one. I thought it'd be on Wiki, the source of all knowledge.  :(

=Chica= 22:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I put a link to his October tour. I don't think he maintains a calendar at a fixed address. -Pronoiac 06:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Classification of Merchant Princes

I just finished the fourth book and I have to say that the series is misclassified. There is no doubt in my mind now that the series is Science Fiction. Just because there is a medieval society in one of the universes and the ability to world-walk bears some resemblance to Zelazny's Amber books does NOT make it fantasy. Even in the first three books, there are no elements that could be considered fantasy EXCEPT for the ability to world-walk. This page and all connected pages should be changed to reflect the correct categorization of the series. Dfmclean (talk) 16:41, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The series is marketed as fantasy. For example, the UK edition of The Family Trade has A fantasy novel on the front. Lurker (said · done) 18:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Since when did marketing people have a clue? They can call it anything that they want, but it is what it is, and what it is is science fiction. Dfmclean (talk) 19:17, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Originally, the Merchant Princes series was sold as a set of fantasy novels in the book deal signed by Stross. However, this constraint has apparently since been relaxed. See also: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-old/2006/02/10#travel-2 David McBride (talk) 10:44, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Is there any objection to changing the classification of this series? Dfmclean (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It's moving more from fantasy to science fiction, yes. I think the description of the extra worlds (#3 & further) is a spoiler, though. - Pronoiac (talk) 07:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, but saying that it's modern and medieval isn't accurate. I changed it to something more general. Dfmclean (talk) 15:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

It definitely moved to science fiction in #5, with the U.S. government running a crash program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop world-walking hardware. --John Nagle (talk) 03:01, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

By #6, we're in Tom Clancy techno-thriller territory: "At 11:00 AM Zulu time, the first of thirty-six B52H Stratofortresses ran its engines up to full throttle, and began its takeoff roll. It was a hot day, and the huge jet's wing tanks were gravid with jet fuel; it climbed slowly away, shaking the ground with a bellowing thunder like the onrushing end of the world". --John Nagle (talk) 03:19, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Other editions

To help sort out questions of "hey, what's 'this' book?"

Alternate editions / titles

Omnibus titles

This would be unchanged from the current page...

Translations

What info would be useful, what translations are missing, etc?

• Dämonentor - German edition of The Atrocity Archives, ISBN 978-3453523135
• Un Secret de Famille - French edition of The Secret Family (Merchant Princes #2), ISBN 2221106571
• Le Bureau des Atrocités - French, The Atrocity Archives, translated by Bernard Sigaud
• Supernova, German, Iron Sunrise

- Pronoiac (talk) 07:57, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Translations, as of September 2008

I briefly thought about putting alt editions just under the original, but I think that would be even more unwieldy.

French

Eschaton Series

• Crépuscule d'acier - Singularity Sky, translated by Xavier Spinat, ISBN 2253122173 / 978-2253122173, paperback ISBN 2915159556 / 978-2915159554
• Aube d'acier - Iron Sunrise, translated by Bernadette Emerich & Xavier Spinat, ISBN 2915159807 / 978-2915159806 (paperback)

The "Bob Howard - Laundry" series

• Le Bureau des Atrocités - The Atrocity Archives, translated by Bernard Sigaud, ISBN 222109977X / 978-2221099773
• Jennifer Morgue - translated by Edith Ochs, ISBN 2749108462 / 978-2749108469 (paperback)

Merchant Princes series

• Les Princes-Marchands, #1, translated by Patrick Dusoulier, paperback ISBN 2221105389 / 978-2221105382
• Un Secret de Famille, #2, paperback ISBN 2221106571 / 978-2221106570
• Famille et Cie, #3, translated by Patrick Dusoulier, ISBN 2221108779 / 978-2221108772 (paperback)

German

Stand Alone Works

• Glashaus, German Glasshouse, translated by Ursula Kiausch, ISBN 3453523601

/ 978-3453523609

• Accelerando, translated by Ursula Kiausch, ISBN 3453521951 / ISBN 978-3453521957

Eschaton series

• Singularität, translated by Usch Kiausch, ISBN 3453520165 / ISBN 978-3453520165
• Supernova, German, Iron Sunrise, ISBN 3453520521 / ISBN 978-3453520523

The "Bob Howard - Laundry" series

• Dämonentor - German edition of The Atrocity Archives, ISBN 978-3453523135

Spanish

• La casa de cristal - Glasshouse, ISBN 8496692663 / ISBN 978-8496692664

Unknown

Per his FAQ, "various translations are on sale or in progress in France [covered], Germany, [covered] the Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, Japan, and Bulgaria." I got the above lists from Amazon.fr & .de, but .jp just gave me English versions.

- Pronoiac (talk) 22:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've got most of the translations, including the Japanese ones. Feorag (talk) 01:17, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Japanese

• シンギュラリティ・スカイ - Singularity Sky, translated by 金子浩訳 (Hiroshi Kaneko - that last kanji is, I think, his job title!). ISBN 4-15-011567-2
• アイアン・サンライズ - Iron Sunrise, translated by 金子浩訳 (Hiroshi Kaneko). ISBN 4-15-011593-1

Feorag (talk) 01:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Fantasybookspot vs bookspotcentral

Before backing out this change, please take a minute to actually do some investigation. http://www.fantasybookspot.com/ is redirecting to http://www.bookspotcentral.com/ which would strongly indicate that we should be changing our links. Dfmclean (talk) 13:58, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

What would qualify these links to be spam? They look like perfectly legit interviews to me. Dfmclean (talk) 18:28, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

My guess is that the widespread update of the website address, from an IP address rather than a named account, looked like spam to someone, who added it to the list of a bot that's removing it on sight. I don't know how to resolve this. - Pronoiac (talk) 20:44, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It would seem the site was originally spammed and the site owner is currently trying to update URLs to a new domain name. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Bookspotcentral.com_and_fantasybookspot.com_redux. The bot's owner watches that page so we should be able to sort out any problems with auto-reversal there too. -- SiobhanHansa 17:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Transhumanist tag

Why is the article tagged with it? AFAIK, Charles Stross mentions some themes of it in the Eschaton series, but where has he expressed support for the movement? Autarch (talk) 13:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd say that Accelerando and Glasshouse certainly have elements of it as well. Licensedlunacy (talk) 09:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Autobio-maint

I am now aware of the existence of this Wikipedia page and will attempt to keep the bibliographic summary accurate. However, for a more exhaustive listing of my work see my short fiction webpage or my novel bibliography. Announcements and news will appear on my weblog. If you want to ask me something, contact me in the first instance via my web contact form. (Due to excessive spam I use mail filters which might occasionally block legitimate communications from strangers. The web contact form is not blocked in this way.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.41.201.19 (talk • contribs) 15:55, 10 March 2005

The web contact form currently gets an "Error 404".

—wwoods 17:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Today, the contact form is here. This might be temporary. - Pronoiac 06:14, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

permanent link, now corrected in mr stross's original post.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Externals links

From discussion with Fæ (talk · contribs) :-

-- Charles Stross (ology) - wondering why wouldn't that be relevant? A website with over 200 references to work (and growing), articles, fiction etc. by Stross? Certainly nothing else on the internet remotely rivals that for information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.156.49.108 (talk) 06:56, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Blogspot clearly fails to meet the WP:ELNO requirements, it just cannot be considered a reliable source. You may have an argument if the blog editor is demonstrated to be an expert but then I would suggest it is either discussed on the article talk page for a consensus or raised for review on WP:RSN. I note that a number of similarly designed blogspot sites about authors are being removed automatically by the linkbot, so I suspect this is now considered a persistent spamming problem. Fæ (talk) 07:01, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

--

The author would clearly seem to be a science fiction expert :- e.g. see inclusion here http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/01/mind-meld-whats-the-best-story-to-never-win-a-hugo/ among other occasions. On browsing, the author has been doing this for many years. Seriously doubt that it is spam - someone was inserting links to references on discovering them, I'd imagine, there's no profit or recognition motive here that I can see. The author of countless thousands of entries over many years is rather unlikely to care whether people look at the site occasionally from wikipedia links. Pretty sure that if the content from some of those was actually put in the various articles it would be fine. e.g. this article mentions some award nominations, etc - that site has all of them.

So if this was put up at a website somewhere - (which would make the point of the navigation and ease of problematic, which looks like why it was done that way for bibliography and browsing reasons), it would be ok? e.g. for example the James H. Schmitz encyclopedia http://www.white-crane.com/Schmitz/ linked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Schmitz which is exactly the same sort of thing.

120.156.49.108 (talk) 07:59, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Response/Analysis of charlesstross.blogspot.com

Just to clarify, we are considering the inclusion of http://charlesstross.blogspot.com/. This is an example of a number of blogspot sites (suffixed with "(ology)" in the page title) recently added to a number of Wikipedia articles. Checking the entries on the this site I find:

1. The home page shows a series of reviews copied from other sites. None is original.
2. The encyclopedia tab copies all language Wikipedia entries including all English Wikipedia entries for his books.
3. Other tabs are all similar with no original content.

Checking the creator of this blog, an Australian named Blue Tyson, he runs a number of similar blog pages. Any reader would seem better off using a search engine rather than use this blog as a source. It clearly fails WP:RS as there is no editorial control over content and it fails WP:ELNO #11. Linking to this site either as a source or an external link would be as poor a contribution as linking to a Google search. Fæ (talk) 13:44, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, looking at some searches and how much is there it would take any given reader some days and several search engines to track all that down, so that is extremely wrong. Try it yourself, that would definitely be a user disservice. Imagine if someone said to you 'here's a list of 200 things I could point out to you, but I won't, I will make you look them up individually, and guess what, you don't know what all of them are!' Not to mention a google search will throw up torrents, bookshops, porn, spam where the author has been used, random other people that might have the same name (not so likely in this case) etc.

There are no reviews at all on the front page - they are links to interviews and other types of content, but there isn't even a review tag at all, so you are wrong there, too. Also looking at the other pages, there are actually thousands of original entries. For example :- http://borderguards.blogspot.com/search/label/zz%20artifact.

Obviously this site is much newer, so there isn't as much there. Some have the complete works done. You didn't look for long, presumably? Wikipedia hasn't even managed that in years and years.

Also on that, how does the worldswithoutend blog pass? I'm a pretty keen SF fan, never heard of them, unlike these.  :-http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=2006

Pretty sure the actual Hugo Awards site would have a list of the Hugo 2006 winners, if that is all you need to get linked, and again, the site in discussion has _all_ the awards.

This is the bio of one of the people doing this blog, speaking of no control "The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking - I highly suggest you try it."

That's about as far from academic as you could get, unlike the rather more serious bibliography and classification and analysis under discussion.

Ip12015649108 (talk) 14:04, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

If you are the same contributor as before, could you be consistent and stick with the same account on this article at least? Please consider the guidance of SOCK and SPA. If you happen to be the owner of the blog, please consider the guidance of COI.

My comments relate to http://charlesstross.blogspot.com, not any of the many sites that blog links to. The fact that the blog includes a large selection of links, some of which may meet ELYES or RS does not make the site a reliable source or invalidate my comments above. The argument that some links in the current Charles Stross/Archive 1 article may be worse is not a justification to add this one (see OSE).

I have raised Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#http://www.worldswithoutend.com for comment on the WWE site. If you are concerned about other website sources in the article, feel free to get some independent opinions on them at WP:RSN yourself. Fæ (talk) 15:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Ordering of the stories

Shouldn't Overtime be listed after The Fuller Memorandum? The second paragraph of the former sound like it follows closely on the heels of the latter, story-wise. --71.82.138.10 (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The Laundry Files as a new article

I wonder if we have enough to create an article on The Laundry Files. I found only a few non-blog articles clearly dedicated to the entire series, like TOR and [1]. There is a bunch of blog-like reviews, some pretty decent ([2]), but well, they are still bloggy. If a dedicated article is created, I'd like it to be of DYKable quality... Some other useful links: RPG game review at rpg.net. There is probably more from reviews of individual books, for example IEEE Spectrum is pretty reliable. So is Wired. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 18:23, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Did he really publish role-playing games in the 1970s?

Stross was born in 1964. In 1979 he was 15. At 15 years of age did he publish some role-playing games? That is remarkable and worthy of discussion, but I worry it is false and the phrase should be edited to read "In the 1980s, Stross published some role-playing game articles about...." Cratha (talk) 01:20, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

He had some RPG-related material published in White Dwarf (here's a description of one 1979 issue mentioning him [3]), and has talked a little bit about it in interviews [4]. It wasn't that unusual a thing for bright fourteen-year-olds to do back then, before they could become internet celebrities. (Not that it's the bright ones who become internet celebrities). Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 03:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Some of the best monsters in the Fiend Folio (published in 1981, a few years after the material was written) were Charlie's. 2601:D:9400:3CD:A88C:5D04:DC1A:B40C (talk) 07:34, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

awards

To me, the insertion of the awards in the bibliography comes off as out of place and POV-ish. It gives the article the character of an advocacy, fan, or promotional article rather than an encyclopedia article. It seems that whoever put in all the awards was trying to bulk them up as much as possible by putting in not just awards but nominations; and "winner" is always in bold, as if the editor was doing an end-zone dance. I'm going to delete the nominations, and move the won awards out of the bibliography and into a separate section.--75.83.69.196 (talk) 17:06, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with this choice. It is not "POV-ish" but allows keeping track of which works were nominated and which won. This in turn is notable since Stross has had an unusual number of nominations compared to wins, and nominations for the major awards are also significant honors. If the publication itself is notable, surely the nominations are even more so, considering that only the top couple percent at most of works in the genre are nominated. I also think the list should be more complete (encyclopedic), listing the stories as well as collections. Enon (talk) 01:58, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

The Awards "section" is incredibly short. Basically, it's a short paragraph, not what I would consider a section. (It also doesn't flow very well as text.) It would probably work better as a bulleted list than text. I'm also not sure if it should be above or below the bibliography. (I think awards are important; I just don't like the way they're being presented.) Any thoughts on these ideas? --Fredrik Coulter (talk) 15:38, 4 March 2014 (UTC)