{"id":38927,"date":"2026-05-20T09:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?p=38927"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:44:18","slug":"charles-stross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2026\/05\/20\/charles-stross\/","title":{"rendered":"Savor Singapore Vermicelli with Charles Stross on Episode 282 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

My guest this third of five conversations recorded last month during the UK national convention Eastercon is Charles Stross<\/a>, an 18-time Hugo Award-nominated writer who’s won three times for his novellas. I\u2019ve been reading him for nearly four decades, ever since his first Interzone<\/em> short story publication in 1987, but he really blew me away with his 2001 Asimov\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0novelette \u201cLobsters,\u201d which seems to have made an impression on the rest of the world as well, for it went on to become the first of his stories to be nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula. <\/p>\n

He’s also won Locus\u00a0Awards for both Best Novel and Best Novella, and has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. His novels have also won the\u00a0Kurd Lasswitz and Italia Awards.\u00a0The Regicide Report<\/em>, the final book in his Laundry Files series, was released in January. His other series include Merchant Princess and the Singularity. Plus he\u2019s got a whole new series in the works, one for which I got an advance peek, and you’ll hear us talk all about it in the conversation which follows.<\/p>\n

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We discussed the twelve “novel-shaped objects” he wrote before making his first professional sale, what changed in his life which meant instead of taking three years to write one novel he could write three novels in one year, why back at the beginning of his career he considered himself the “failure to launch” of the Interzone<\/em> generation of writers (and how that changed), how to best take the temperature of critique group criticism, why it was time to wrap up his Laundry Files series (and who he had to become in order to be able to write that finale), the way the opening sentence of an as yet unfinished novel became the seed for a new series in progress, how his love for Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat<\/em> novels ties into his next project, the evolving nature of convention-going for long-time attendees, and much more.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you can join us at Cafe Soya<\/a> — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — or wherever<\/a> you choose to consume your podcasts — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample a few of the 281 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Listen via the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or simply use the embed below.<\/p>\n