Ken MacLeod

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Ken MacLeod
Born August 2, 1954
Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland
Occupation Writer.

Ken MacLeod (born August 2, 1954), an award-winning Scottish science fiction writer, lives near Edinburgh. He graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics. [1] His novels often explore socialist, communist and anarchist political ideas, most particularly the variants of Trotskyism and anarcho-capitalism or extreme economic libertarianism. Technical themes encompass singularities, divergent human cultural evolution and post-human cyborg-resurrection. MacLeod's general outlook can be best described as techno-progressive[2] [3], though unlike a majority of tech-progressives, he has expressed great scepticism over the possibility and especially over the desirability of Strong AI. Some of his characters (often but not always villains) are anti-technology radical environmentalists.[1]

He is known for his constant in-joking and punning on the intersection between socialist ideologies and computer programming, as well as other fields. For example, his chapter titles such as "Trusted Third Parties" or "Revolutionary Platform" usually have double (or multiple) meanings. A future programmers union is called "International Workers of the World Wide Web", or the Webblies, a reference to the Industrial Workers of the World, who are nicknamed the Wobblies.

He is part of a new generation of British science fiction writers, who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross and Liz Williams.

Contents

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Fall Revolution series

[edit] Engines of Light trilogy

A first contact alternate history series set in the early 21st century where the Russia and the former USSR have once again formed a socialist bloc, along with the European Union.

[edit] Other work

[edit] Analysis

The SF Foundation have published an analysis of MacLeod's work called The True Knowledge Of Ken MacLeod (2003; ISBN 0-903007-02-9) edited by Andrew M. Butler and Farah Mendlesohn. As well as critical essays it contains material by MacLeod himself, including his introduction to the German edition of Banks' Consider Phlebas.

[edit] Quotes

  • (On technological singularity): "...the rapture for nerds..." -- The Cassini Division
  • "The uploads replicate and develop relationships. Most of them go very bad. You sometimes get an entire virtual planet of four billion people devoted to building prayer wheels in an attempt at a denial of service attack on God." -- Newton's Wake
  • (On Strong AI): "...he (Kevin Warwick) writes cheerful little books about how the machines are going to take over.... Well, it's possible, but I still tend to think of that as the lights going out. I don't like Hans Moravec's vision of the future at all. I don't see why we should stand for it actually.... I greatly admired Greg Egan's book Diaspora but I hated that world. It's not a world I want to see, or to live in for that matter." -- Sci-Fi Zone interview
  • "... a faded black T-shirt with a soaring penguin and the slogan 'Where do you want to come from today?'" -- Newton's Wake
  • (On the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia):

"Husband, McCool, Anderson, Brown, Chawla, Clark, Ramon.

Komarov, Grissom, White, Chaffee, Dobrovolsky, Volkov, Patsayev,

Resnick, Scobee, Smith, McNair, McAuliffe, Jarvis, Onizuka.

These names will be written under other skies." USENET posting to rec.sf.arts.fandom February 1, 2003 4:21 pm

  • "Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear *fucking* weapons. " -- USENET posting to rec.sf.arts.fandom 28 September 2000

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ken's offical page at Orbit Books
  2. ^ SF Zone interview with MacLeod
  3. ^ Butler, Andrew M., Mendlesohn, Farah (2003). (eds.): The True Knowledge Of Ken MacLeod. SF Foundation.

[edit] External links

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