Ken MacLeod explained

Ken MacLeod
Birth Name:	Kenneth Macrae MacLeod
Birth Date:	2 August 1954
Birth Place:	Stornoway, Scotland
Occupation:	Writer
Nationality:	UK
Awards:	BSFA Award, Prometheus Award
Genre:	Science fiction
Language:	English
Alma Mater:	University of Glasgow (BS)
Children:	2

Kenneth Macrae MacLeod (born 2 August 1954) is a Scottish science fiction writer. His novels The Sky Road and The Night Sessions won the BSFA Award. MacLeod's novels have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Memorial awards for best novel on multiple occasions.

A techno-utopianist, MacLeod's work makes frequent use of libertarian socialist themes; he is a three-time winner of the libertarian Prometheus Award. He sits on the advisory board of the Edinburgh Science Festival. MacLeod has been chosen as a Guest of Honor at the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow.

Biography

MacLeod was born in Stornoway, Scotland in 1954.^[1] He graduated from University of Glasgow with a degree in zoology in 1976 and worked as a computer programmer and wrote a masters thesis on biomechanics.^[2] He was a Trotskyist activist in the 1970s and early 1980s^[3] MacLeod is opposed to Scottish independence.^[4]

Personal life

Married with two children, he lived in South Queensferry near Edinburgh before moving to Gourock, on the Firth of Clyde, in June 2017.^[5]

Writing

He is part of a group of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Neal Asher, Stephen Baxter, Iain M. Banks, Paul J. McAuley, Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Charles Stross, Richard K. Morgan, and Liz Williams.

His science fiction novels often explore socialist, communist, and anarchist political ideas, especially Trotskyism and anarcho-capitalism (or extreme economic libertarianism).^[6] Technical themes encompass singularities, divergent human cultural evolution, and post-human cyborg-resurrection. MacLeod's general outlook can be best described as techno-utopian socialist,^{[7] [8]} though unlike a majority of techno-utopians, he has expressed great scepticism over the possibility and especially over the desirability of strong AI.

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 "Information Workers of the World Wide Web", or the Webblies, a reference to the Industrial Workers of the World, who are nicknamed the Wobblies. The Webblies idea formed a central part of the novel For the Win by Cory Doctorow and MacLeod is acknowledged as coining the term.^[9] Doctorow and Charles Stross also used one of MacLeod's references to the singularity as "the rapture for nerds" as the title for their collaborative novel Rapture of the Nerds (although MacLeod denies coining the phrase^[10]). There are also many references to, or puns on, zoology and palaeontology. For example, in The Stone Canal the title of the book, and many places described in it, are named after anatomical features of marine invertebrates such as starfish.

Books about MacLeod

The Science Fiction Foundation have published an analysis of MacLeod's work titled The True Knowledge Of Ken MacLeod (2003;), 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.

Bibliography

Series

• Fall Revolution series
  1. The Star Fraction (1995; US paperback) – Prometheus Award winner, 1996; Clarke Award nominee, 1996^[11]
  2. The Stone Canal (1996; US paperback) – Prometheus Award winner, 1998; BSFA nominee, 1996^[11]
  3. The Cassini Division (1998; US paperback) – BSFA nominee, 1998;^[12] Clarke, and Nebula Awards nominee, 1999^[13]
  4. The Sky Road (1999; US paperback) BSFA Award winner, 1999;^[13] Hugo Award nominee, 2001^[14]  – represents an 'alternate future' to the second two books, as its events diverge sharply due to a choice made differently by one of the protagonists in the middle of The Stone Canal^[15]
  • This series is also available in two volumes:
    1. Fractions: The First Half of the Fall Revolution (2009; US paperback)
    2. Divisions: The Second Half of the Fall Revolution (2009; US paperback)
• Engines of Light Trilogy
  1. Cosmonaut Keep (2000; US paperback) – Clarke Award nominee, 2001;^[14] Hugo Award nominee, 2002^[16] Begins the series with a first contact story in a speculative mid-21st century where a resurgently socialist USSR (incorporating the European Union) is once again in opposition with the capitalist United States, then diverges into a story told on the other side of the galaxy of Earth-descended colonists trying to establish trade and relations within an interstellar empire of several species who travel from world to world at the speed of light.
  2. Dark Light (2001; US paperback) – Campbell Award nominee, 2002^[16]
  3. Engine City (2002; US paperback)
• The Corporation Wars^[17]
  1. Dissidence (2016)
  2. Insurgence (2016)
  3. Emergence (2017)
• Lightspeed Trilogy^[18]
  1. Beyond the Hallowed Sky (2021; Orbit)
  2. Beyond the Reach of Earth (2023; Orbit)
  3. Beyond the Light Horizon (2024; Orbit)

Other work

• (2004; US paperback edition) – BSFA nominee, 2004;^[19] Campbell Award nominee, 2005^[20]
• Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact (2005; UK hardback edition) Prometheus Award winner 2006; Hugo, Locus SF, Campbell and Clarke Awards nominee, 2006;^[21] BSFA nominee, 2005^[20]
• "The Highway Men" (2006; UK edition)
• The Execution Channel (2007; UK hardback edition) – BSFA Award nominee, 2007;^[22] Campbell, and Clarke Awards nominee, 2008^[23]
• The Night Sessions (2008; UK hardback edition) – Winner Best Novel 2008 BSFA^[23]
• The Restoration Game (2010). According to the author, "In The Restoration Game I revisited the fall of the Soviet Union, with a narrator who is at first a piece in a game played by others, and works her way up to becoming to some extent a player, but – as we see when we pull back at the end – is still part of a larger game."^[24]
• Intrusion (2012): "an Orwellian surveillance society installs sensors on pregnant women to prevent smoking or drinking; and these women also have to take a eugenic 'fix' to eliminate genetic anomalies.^[24]
• Descent (2014):^[25] "My genre model for Descent was bloke-lit – that's basically first-person, self-serving, rueful confessional by a youngish man looking back on youthful stupidities... ... Descent is about flying saucers, hidden races, and Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution, all set in a tale of Scottish middle class family life in and after the Great Depression of the 21st Century. Almost mainstream fiction, really."^[24]

Short fiction

• "" (1998; UK paperback edition ; part of the young adult fiction series The Web. Collected in Giant Lizards from Another Star)
• "The Light Company" (1998) (quoting Ken MacLeod's blog: "The Light Company doesn't exist - the title was a provisional one, for purposes of a book contract, which I think got onto the publisher's list of forthcoming books and then took on a life of its own in the wild." - Ken, at Thursday, October 14, 2010 7:34:00 am)^[26]
• "The Human Front" (2002; winner of Short-form Sidewise Award for Alternate History 2002; collected in Giant Lizards from Another Star)
• "The Highway Men" (2006)
• "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" (The New Space Opera, 2007; nominated for Hugo Award for Best Short Story)
• "Ms Found on a Hard Drive" (Glorifying Terrorism, 2007)
• "Earth Hour" (2011)
• "'The Entire Immense Superstructure': An Installation" (Reach for Infinity, 2014)^[27]

Collections

• Poems & Polemics (2001; Rune Press: Minneapolis, MN) Chapbook of non-fiction and poetry.
• Giant Lizards From Another Star (2006; US trade hardcover) Collected fiction and nonfiction.
• A Jura for Julia (2024; UK hardcover) Collected fiction.

External links

• Ken MacLeod's Weblog
• Ken MacLeod's page at Macmillan.com
  • The Human Genre Project, a collection of works on genetic themes, collated and maintained by MacLeod
• Free MacLeod stories online at Free Speculative Fiction Online

Interviews

• Interview with Ken Macleod at SFFWorld.com
• SF Zone interview with MacLeod
• Interview on the SciFiDimensions Podcast
• Science Saturday: Galactic Princesses Edition Bloggingheads dialog with Annalee Newitz
• The story behind Descent - Online Essay by Ken MacLeod

Notes and References

1. Web site: Raven . Paul . February 2007 . The New British Catastrophe . 20 March 2012 . The SF Site.
2. Web site: Ken MacLeod's official page at Orbit Books . https://web.archive.org/web/20051217181001/http://www.orbitbooks.co.uk/orbit/macleod-ken.asp . 17 December 2005 . 20 March 2012 . Orbitbooks.co.uk.
3. Walker . Jesse . Jesse Walker . November 2000 . Anarchies, States, and Utopias . 20 March 2012 . Reason Magazine.
4. Web site: MacLeod . Ken . 19 December 2012 . Never knowingly understated . 27 February 2014 . The Early Days of A Better Nation . Of the 27, I counted 15 who would give a definite Yes to independence. Only two of the others – Jenni Calder and myself – give a definite No..
5. Web site: Other Good News . Ken. MacLeod. The Early Days of a Better Nation . 4 March 2018.
6. Web site: Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Ken MacLeod, M.Phil.. 2020-07-30. lifeboat.com.
7. Web site: SF Zone interview with MacLeod . Zone-sf.com . 20 March 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20051024053307/http://www.zone-sf.com/kenmacleod.html . 24 October 2005 . dead .
8. Book: Butler . Andrew M. . Mendlesohn . Farah . The True Knowledge Of Ken MacLeod . 2003 . 0-903007-02-9 . SF Foundation .
9. Book: For the Win . Cory Doctorow . 2010 . HarperVoyager . 978-0765322166 . MacLeod is thanked in the Acknowledgements section: "Many thanks to Ken MacLeod for letting me use IWWWW and 'Webbly.'"
10. News: Communism failed. What about the ideal of global humanity? – Ken MacLeod Aeon Essays. Aeon. 2018-08-18. en.
11. Web site: 1996 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
12. Web site: 1998 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
13. Web site: 1999 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
14. Web site: 2001 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
15. "The Falling Rate of Profit, Red Hordes and Green Slime: What the Fall Revolution Books Are About" – Nova Express, Volume 6, Spring/Summer 2001, pp 19–21
16. Web site: 2002 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
17. Web site: MacLeod. Ken. The Shape Of Things To Come. The Early Days of a Better Nation. 28 April 2016.
18. Web site: MacLeod. Ken. Beyond the Hallowed Sky. Fantastic Fiction. 8 June 2020.
19. Web site: 2004 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award | WWEnd . Worldswithoutend.com . 11 June 2010.
20. Web site: 2005 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
21. Web site: 2006 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
22. Web site: 2007 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award | WWEnd . Worldswithoutend.com . 11 June 2010.
23. Web site: 2008 Award Winners & Nominees | Science Fiction & Fantasy Books by Award. Worlds Without End . 11 June 2010.
24. Web site: Turbulent Years Ahead: An Interview with Ken MacLeod. Los Angeles Review of Books. 24 February 2014. Jerome. Winter.
25. Web site: Ken MacLeod - Descent . Upcoming4.me . 18 August 2013 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140202102112/http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/ken-macleod-descent-cover-art . 2 February 2014 .
26. Web site: The Early Days of a Better Nation . 2023-04-27 . kenmacleod.blogspot.com.
27. Web site: Step into the Stars: Reach for Infinity, ed. Jonathan Strahan . . Niall . Alexander . 12 June 2014 . 13 December 2015.