Charles Stross

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born 1964 in Leeds, England) is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy, one of the most recognised voices in English-language science fiction of the early twenty-first century. He works mainly in hard science fiction and space opera. His writing belongs to the tradition of cyberpunk, and he has openly cited William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling as influences.

His background is scientific rather than literary. He graduated in pharmacy and qualified as a pharmacist, and later took a postgraduate degree in computer science at the University of Bradford. In the 1990s he worked as a technical author and programmer, and in 2000 he turned to writing full time, first on technical material and then on fiction. As a young writer he contributed articles on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to White Dwarf magazine, and some of the creatures he devised for the game were later included in the Fiend Folio monster book. His first published short story, "The Boys", appeared in Interzone in 1987.

His first novel, Singularity Sky, came out in 2003 and was also a Hugo Award nominee. Since then he has moved between series and standalone books. The Laundry Files mixes British intelligence work, bureaucracy and otherworldly horror with dry humour. Accelerando, which deals with technological acceleration and digital minds, won the 2006 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and his novella "The Concrete Jungle" won the Hugo for Best Novella in 2005.

Stross has also written fantasy, most notably the Merchant Princes series, along with speculative fiction focused on surveillance and digital politics. His legacy lies in combining technologically driven science fiction with bureaucratic satire and humour, and in his active role in debates over copyright and open licensing, a cause he pursued alongside Cory Doctorow.