Charlie Stross
LightNews LightNews
banner
cstross.bsky.social
Charlie Stross
@cstross.bsky.social
26K followers 530 following 4.9K posts
SFF author, triple Hugo award winner (and three times Locus award too), over a million books sold.

Mostly on Mastodon: @[email protected]

Blog: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/
Posts Replies Media Videos
cstross.bsky.social
Convincing you to read my novel by the first sentence. Share yours if you want.

(Here's the opening of "Neptune's Brood".)
NEPTUNE'S BROOD I can get you a cheaper ticket if you let me amputate your legs: I can even take your thighs as a deposit," said the travel agent. He was clearly trying hard to be helpful: "It's not as if you'll need them where you're going, is it?"
November 11, 2025 at 11:29 AM
cstross.bsky.social
I have never done (9) (it's anti-social), (13) (Blockbuster never operated in my country), or (20) (those things were *expensive*).

I am teh oldz.
November 8, 2025 at 6:30 PM
cstross.bsky.social
You're in the USA: I'm in the UK.

Here's my M3 Macbook Air keyboard. Compare the return key with your model:

Keyboard of an en_UK layout Macbook Air.
November 4, 2025 at 8:53 PM
cstross.bsky.social
"Two islands on the carrier" is admittedly an idea that the RN seems unaccountably attached to ...
The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth under way with a bunch of helicopters on the flight deck: it has a ski jump at the front for F35-B STOV/L jets, and two islands (large superstructures) in tandem rather than the more common single island most carriers have.
November 1, 2025 at 11:36 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Ahem:
Photo of a British road sign in white on brown, indicating nearby attractions. There are two attractions indicated. Top item: Tank Museum, 1.5 miles. Bottom item: Monkey World, 1 mile.
October 29, 2025 at 9:39 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Here is the content warning from the front matter of my *other* WIP (so I'm chewing on two space operas in the same universe simultaneously: bite me!), titled "Starter Pack". (Text in alt-text.)

#FridayFling
This story is set in a Crapsack Empire (if you're unfamiliar with the term "Crapsack", go look it up on TVTropes). Bad things happen indiscriminately to everybody, good or bad. This story deals with crime—blackmail, robbery, fraud, criminal impersonation, muggings, murder, rebellion, necrophilia, poor life choices in general—and punishment: hangings, floggings, brandings, breaking on the wheel, crucifixions, and scaphism. (Don't look that up!) Things that are considered normal everyday occurrences by our protagonists include memory erasure, forced marriage, beating children, public executions, big game hunting, torture, slavery, genocide, imperialism, sexism, racism, homophobia, bigotry, and setting clowns on fire.
October 24, 2025 at 4:01 PM
cstross.bsky.social
Behold, an infodumpy backgrounder from my WIP, "Ghost Engine" (a space opera that takes the more surreal religious overtones of transhumanism about as seriously as they deserve):

#FridayFling
The Accelerationist Jihad erupted like pus from an infected abscess in the middle of one of the Orthodox Strengist conclave's once-a-century doctrinal deliberations when a delegation arrived from one of the Strengist penumbral worlds—a dank and miserable planet orbiting an isolated brown dwarf just close enough to its nearest grid-connected neighbor to send a slower-than-light trade ship two or three times a millennium—and vomited more heresies than the Strengist Inquisition usually expected to have to suppress in an entire dwarf galaxy over the course of a thousand years. Something about the long dark nights in orbit around a failed star that emitted more heat than light was clearly conducive to contrarianism, and in the absence of any connection to the grid (that sad and neglected world being too hardscrabble poor to rate its own ansible) there was no loving oversight by the Inquisition, and in the absence of the Inquisition a thousand fetid night-blooming toxic flowers blossomed. At some time in the three centuries since the last contact with the interstellar ecumene the heretics had taken over the asylum, and now they were out for revenge on the entire universe ...
October 24, 2025 at 3:53 PM
cstross.bsky.social
Ganked from Mastodon …
Photo with caption. The photo shows an arm with partial sleeve tattoo, owner is wearing a sleeveless denim jacket. The most prominent tattoo is a pair of scissors, blades part-open and interlocking. Caption text reads: My daughter got this matching tattoo today with her best friend. She said something about how they're both crafty and her best friend wants to be a hair stylist but honestly do any of you other moms know if this is a devil symbol or anything? I just want to protect my little girl from satan.
October 23, 2025 at 10:06 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
Blurred selfie showing the author, seated with arms flung up defensively, being menaced by a small tortoiseshell tyrant perched on the arm of his chair
October 17, 2025 at 9:11 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Realistically, the ground pressure on each foot would make it unworkable—it really needs tank tracks or lots of wheels. Like one of these, minus the human driver:
A Russian MAZ-7917 ICBM TELAR—a giant 24-wheel-drive truck with all-wheel drive and an erectable missile tube sized for a 100 ton ICBM running the length of its spine. Powered by two gas turbines, driving electric motors on each wheel: they're independently steerable.
October 15, 2025 at 8:00 AM
cstross.bsky.social
My spouse is walking around Vienna today, and happened upon a very appropriately named pet shop ...
Photograph of a building front, partially concealled behind a white van. Above the roofline is an awning with a picture of a dog and a cat beside the name of the pet shop: BARF-SHOP.
September 30, 2025 at 9:36 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Oh dear.

My friend @martiell wanted a picture of an angry porg, so he typed "cross porg" into ChatGPT ...

https://chaos.social/@judy2k/115258137221499155

A porg. Nailed to a wooden cross. (I have no idea what a "porg" is. Some kind of animal with big eyes, a sad expression, and a hat.)
September 24, 2025 at 7:50 AM
cstross.bsky.social
This is how I feel about attack novels right now:
Screencap of a tweet from Stephanie King Text reads: Sometimes when I feel bad about a first draft I like to think about this behind-the-scenes sketch of the facehugger from Alien Picture in tweet shows: (top panel) an egg from Alien, with a disc near the top, then (bottom panel) disc popping off, and an growling angry face with too many legs jumping out
September 18, 2025 at 12:47 PM
cstross.bsky.social
GO AWAY MUSE, I DO NOT NEED ANOTHER ATTACK NOVEL RIGHT NOW, I'M ONLY 92% OF THE WAY THROUGH WRITING THE ONE YOU THREW AT ME IN MARCH (WHICH IN TURN INTERRUPTED THE *OTHER* NOVEL I WAS 85% OF THE WAY THROUGH WRITING)
Seven panel cartoon strip from Oglaf webcomic (NSFW) https://media.oglaf.com/comic/blankpage.jpg 1. An aesthete sits trying to write at a candle-lit desk, and failing. 2. A woman in a chiton, one breast bared, kicks in the door and marches in, wearing a stern expression. 3. Poet: "What's this? Who are you?" Muse (for it is she): "I'm your fucking muse you little polyp!" 4. Poet (distressed): "No no! My muse is willowy! Alabaster!" Muse: "Yeah, she had an accident. I'm your muse now." 5. Muse smashes desk, throws book past poets head, debris everywhere. 6. Muse (grabbing poet by the throat): "So are you going to write some poems or am I going to tear your balls off and hunt ostriches with them?" 7. Servant (leaning over poet: it is now daytime): "You've been productive, m'lord!" Poet (sweating bullets and scribbling on a stack of paper): "Shut up! Writing!"
September 16, 2025 at 12:24 PM
cstross.bsky.social
(Found on Mastodon)

Text: remember that plant you insisted on calling an egg? well this is her now

https://jorts.horse/@mel/115197584163277477
Produce aisle of a supermarket. In the foreground, a hand is holding up a malformed aubergine (eggplant) that has two smaller aubergine emerging from it halfway up—they strongly resemble human breasts.
September 13, 2025 at 3:27 PM
cstross.bsky.social
Good morning! Here is a meme (ganked from somewhere it was retooted on Mastodon, original source lost in the mists of time)

It's the classic Distracted Boyfriend, only all three participants are wearing vaguely classical robes, the woman in the red dress's hairdo is a full head of angry snakes, and the distracted boyfriend has been turned to stone.
September 10, 2025 at 8:44 AM
cstross.bsky.social
From the Metro (https://)metro.co.uk/2025/08/26/patriots-mistakenly-paint-danish-flag-english-roundabout-24004892/)

Screen cap from The Metro, with same headline (English 'Patriots' mistakenly paint Danish flag on roundabout) above two photos. On the neft: gammon in blue t-shirt and face mask running with paint roller. On the right: a cobbled street with a small roundabout (traffic circle). It has been painted over with a red background and a white cross on top.
September 9, 2025 at 10:13 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Drop an old person you're going to turn into in the future

Actor Peter Sellars portraying the eponymous character in the movie "Doctor Strangelove"; a sixty-ish white male in a dark suit and sinister dark glasses, head tilted to one side, sitting in a wheelchair, surrounded by senior military officers and politicians, in front of a wall projected screen showing the USSR with bombers inbound
September 2, 2025 at 9:16 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Or, as XKCD put it, Duty Calls …

(https://xkcd.com/386/)
XKCD cartoon 386: Text of dialog. Person 1: ARE YOU COMING TO BED? Person 2: I CAN'T. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Person 1: WHAT? Person 2: SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET.
August 28, 2025 at 1:04 PM
cstross.bsky.social
Kobo's recommendation algorithm has a warped sense of humour, maybe: what do (the first) three out of the top five authors in their "weird girl fiction" promotion right now have in common?
Screenshot of the UK Kobo Store "ebook deals" section today. It's running a promotion titled "Enjoy a summer filled with Weird Girl Fiction". The authors of the top books in the promotion are Tony Tulathimutte, Jeffrey Eugenides, and David Barnett. (That's the first three—all male authors.) Then we get to books by Sayaka Murata and Mariana Enriquez.
August 23, 2025 at 6:36 PM
cstross.bsky.social
I nicked the idea from, well, from this:
The one existing Lun-class Ekranoplan, beached on the shore of the Black Sea. (Utterly bizarre aircraft that resembles a flying boat except it isn't one, exactly, with eight shoulder-mounted jet engines (another two are out of shot), a high T-tail, six missile tubes, gun turrets, looks like something out of a gritty Star Wars movie). Stranded on its way to be turned into a display exhibit when a war broke out.
August 23, 2025 at 5:30 PM
cstross.bsky.social
This is who runs this account:
The Emperor Dalek from Doctor Who, surrounded by hovering guard Daleks: the Emperor's shell is open revealing the octopoid horror within
August 10, 2025 at 10:38 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Gonna need a scanning tunnelling electron microscope to play this violin
August 3, 2025 at 7:23 PM
cstross.bsky.social
(Shamelessly stolen from @[email protected] *because it's truthy*)

Some days you wake up and think Why not replace Chuckles III with a Toyota at least he'd start reliably in the morning

Screencap from some other media caption: angelicguy me and the boys have a couple of chains wrapped around the sword in the stone hooked up to mikes toyota tundra gonna pull that fucker out like a tooth. reply: seaweed-station Me and the boys misunderstood the arcane nature of the stone and now the Toyota is king of England
August 3, 2025 at 10:02 AM
cstross.bsky.social
Q: what is the most unique museum u have visited

A: I got a tour of the collection at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester NY, including their warehouse. www.museumofplay.org

There was some WILD stuff there, like this 1/4 scale working model electric chair. (Paging Pugsley Addams ...!)
A warehouse shelf displaying an electric chair about 50-60cm high, with straps and electrodes. Possibly a macabre toy, or a salesman's tool for demonstrating electrocution on stray dogs …
August 1, 2025 at 3:24 PM