Charlie's Diary

You should start your next book with, "A man came through a door with a gun in his hand."

There's no way you can fail.

(or even "THE door". Damn copying and pasting....)

Just write a laundry story set in some exotic film noir setting (50s detective story style), and all will be good. Maybe a break-up between Bob and his love interest, and some surreal alternate history place to act out his new-found crazy loneliness.

You outdid Robert Silverberg Himself! He had a novel nominated in 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1973. He had two nominated in 1973. None of his five novels won the tin rocket at the time. You sir are the first person I know of, who has had a novel nominated five years in a row of which not one novel was deemed worthy of the tin rocket. It is an achievement of some sort... Now I wonder who is going to be the first author to have 3 novels nominated for a Hugo in the same year,,, Two of them wil not win the tin rocket for sure.

Of the tin rocket for Novel... It has been given to a book in the Harry Potter series. Nuff said...
Enjoy your flying around!

"A man came through a door with a gun in his hand. He shuddered uncontrolably as the spray of semen spattered across the carpet gripper rod, and his finger tightened inside the trigger guard ..."

No. I'm not going there. Besides, Tricia Sullivan did the female equivalent memorably in "Maul" (a novel which, incidentally, does indeed pass the Bechdel Test).

Aaah, harsh luck! How feckless the public, how cruel their devoted worship be. I read all of the nominees, and though the winner for novel definitely had strengths I did not feel it was the strongest. There's always next year, is there not?

On the other hand, it was good to be able to get to your reading at the Tattered Cover, even if the rest of Denvention was a no-go due to work. Congrats of surviving the grueling march of your your out here.

Write a Doctor Who script. OK the competition is tough, but no other series is likely to get a look in for years.

Don't listen to Till@3- breaking up Bob and Mo is type: wack.

Chabon may have brought home the rock, but he lives in CA, so I think you still win...

Novel was the one that surprised me. I don't think Chabon's is really SF. It is a bestseller in the mundane world, though, so I wonder if people voted the one they'd heard the most about.

I read Saturn's Children while you were gone and really enjoyed it. While I'd like to find out what happens after, I believe you when you say "no sequel."

Ah, Charlie, I was sad to hear this. I thought Halting State was brilliant, your best yet, and a book with quite a lot to say about the moment we're in. Chabon's a fine writer, but...

Well, you (I hope) have a number of great books still in you, and plenty of time to win heaps of awards. And I for one will be reading the first and cheering the second.

I'm going to have to seriously consider paying my money and getting the vote next year. The last 20 years or so I haven't had time to take several days off and fly somewhere else for something that wasn't either a) family business or b) paid for by my employer so I wouldn't have to take vacation time. But Charlie Stross really deserves at least 2 Hugos at this point, so remediation is in order.

Drat.

Keep writing, it will happen. Can't ignore the consistent stream of nominations.

I, too, am sorry you didn't win, and sorrier I didn't vote this year. (My second-place vote would have gone to Chabon, so I'm not entirely sorry.) It looks like your novel fell victim to polarization among the novel voters, with fans of McDonald's novel mostly giving their 2nd-place votes to Chabon's (and vice versa) while fans of Sawyer's novel mostly gave their 2nd-place votes to Scalzi (but not quite vice versa; a plurality of Scalzi fans preferred your novel over Sawyer's).

If it's any consolation, you are the only novelist among this year's nominees whose works I routinely seek out without their being nominated for Hugos or Nebulas first. Keep up the good work!

Charlie, you're the best :)
In a few short years from now, they'll start having categories named after ya...that's how influential your work's gonna be :D
Your fan base is gonna usurp power(or more likely, would hack the damn Denvention dB) one of these days, and then its Antipope time!!

I was a little surprised at the Hugo awards. Most people I know, as well as people I talked to at the convention parties, voted for Halting State. (I suppose such a sampling has quite a selection bias, of course.) As a software engineer who has been somewhat bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, I found the ideas in Halting State inspiring -- they're the sort of ideas I sit around thinking about when contemplating the future of software. While reading your book, I was even having dreams about coding in Python 3000 for the Zone. :)

I was introduced to your work this year thanks to its Hugo nomination, and hopefully many other readers were as well. I will definitely be reading your other books. Thanks for signing my copy of Halting State yesterday, and I hope you have a pleasant journey back to the UK.

BTW: Just bought a copy of /Halting State/, enjoyed /Saturn's Children/.

You know FedEx will happily ship something that looks like a bazooka shell?

FedEx will happily ship something that is a bazooka shell, as long as you have the appropriate permits, paperwork, and pay them a small truckload of money. Biohazards? Check. Nuclear materials? Check. Museum-grade pieces of art requiring multiple armed guards with them during every second of transit? Check. Your auto, enclosed in a truck? Check. Pretty much anything that can be legally shipped, they'll move.

Too bad about your loss. Maybe next time you can get the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to count the ballots. Just to make sure that the vote goes the right way.

As for FedEx shipping anything / anywhere: someone produced a conceptual self portrait with the world as his canvas, using a GPS and detailed instructions to a shipping company:

http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com/drawing.aspx

He didn't actually do it (he's a student, and it would have cost a fortune), but he determined that if he'd had the funds, the shipping company (DHL) would have been willing to follow his instructions.

I actually thought it said 'Beef Hiatus' i thought you'd given up eating cow, maybe you already don't eat cow. Bad luck on the bazooka rocket thing. We all know you write fantastic books and so do you and you don't need a bazooka rocket to validate your writing.

Pity, that you were unable to win with your Halting State. Haven't read it yet, BTW. Unlike many other talented SF-writers, you are almost unknown to Russian or Ukrainian reader so far. But you have won fans here - that's why I am here.
Guess, you might have made another variation or sequel (if there's an inspration, of course ;) ) of your Missile Gap, maybe, transformed into the novel, maybe, having even more optimistic end. The very idea is extremely prolific!
Best regards!