Charles Stross Books

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Charles Stross is an English author who writes science fiction. Though, Stross hates being categorized as a pure science fiction writer because he has dabbled in fantasy and Lovecraftian Horror. His determination to experiment has always made Stross’ books difficult to market.

Order of Singularity Sky Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Singularity Sky 2003 Description / Buy
2 Iron Sunrise 2004 Description / Buy
3 Accelerando 2005 Description / Buy

Order of The Merchant Princes Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 The Family Trade 2004 Description / Buy
2 The Hidden Family 2005 Description / Buy
3 The Clan Corporate 2006 Description / Buy
4 The Merchants' War 2007 Description / Buy
5 The Revolution Business 2009 Description / Buy
6 The Trade of Queens 2010 Description / Buy

Order of Laundry Files Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 The Atrocity Archives 2004 Description / Buy
2 The Jennifer Morgue 2006 Description / Buy
3 Down on the Farm (Short Story) 2010 Description / Buy
4 Equoid (Short Story) 2010 Description / Buy
5 Overtime (Short Story) 2010 Description / Buy
6 The Fuller Memorandum 2010 Description / Buy
7 The Apocalypse Codex 2012 Description / Buy
8 The Rhesus Chart 2014 Description / Buy
9 The Annihilation Score 2015 Description / Buy
10 The Nightmare Stacks 2016 Description / Buy
11 The Delirium Brief 2017 Description / Buy
12 The Labyrinth Index 2018 Description / Buy
13 Escape from Yokai Land (Short Story) 2022 Description / Buy
14 Season of Skulls 2023 Description / Buy

Order of The New Management Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Dead Lies Dreaming 2020 Description / Buy
2 Quantum of Nightmares 2022 Description / Buy

Order of Laundry Files Collections

# Read Title Published Details
1 Three Tales from the Laundry Files (Short Story) 2014 Description / Buy

Order of Halting State Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Halting State 2007 Description / Buy
2 Rule 34 2011 Description / Buy

Order of Freyaverse Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Saturn's Children 2008 Description / Buy
2 Neptune's Brood 2013 Description / Buy

Order of Empire Games Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Empire Games 2017 Description / Buy
2 Dark State 2018 Description / Buy
3 Invisible Sun 2021 Description / Buy

Order of Charles Stross Standalone Novels

# Read Title Published Details
1 Glasshouse 2006 Description / Buy
2 Missile Gap (Short Story) 2006 Description / Buy
3 Scratch Monkey 2011 Description / Buy
4 The Rapture of the Nerds ( With: Cory Doctorow) 2012 Description / Buy

Order of Charles Stross Short Stories/Novellas

# Read Title Published Details
1 Approaching Xanadu (Short Story) 1989 Description / Buy
2 Lobsters (Short Story) 2001 Description / Buy
3 Halo (Short Story) 2002 Description / Buy
4 Nightfall (Short Story) 2003 Description / Buy
5 Festival of Fools 2003 Description / Buy
6 The Concrete Jungle (Short Story) 2004 Description / Buy
7 Elector (Short Story) 2004 Description / Buy
8 Palimpsest (Short Story) 2009 Description / Buy
9 A Tall Tail (Short Story) 2012 Description / Buy

Order of Charles Stross Short Story Collections

# Read Title Published Details
1 Toast, and Other Stories 2002 Description / Buy
2 Wireless 2009 Description / Buy

Order of Charles Stross Non-Fiction Books

# Read Title Published Details
1 The Web Architect's Handbook 1996 Description / Buy

Charles Stross Anthologies

# Read Title Published Details
1 Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2001 2001 Description / Buy
2 Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future 2002 Description / Buy
3 The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 15 2002 Description / Buy
4 Year's Best SF 8 2003 Description / Buy
5 The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 16 2003 Description / Buy
6 ReVisions 2004 Description / Buy
7 The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection 2004 Description / Buy
8 Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2004 2004 Description / Buy
9 One Million A.D. 2005 Description / Buy
10 The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year\'s Best Science Fiction 2005 Description / Buy
11 The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction 2006 Description / Buy
12 The Space Opera Renaissance 2006 Description / Buy
13 Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology 2007 Description / Buy
14 Space Opera 2007 Description / Buy
15 The Book of Cthulhu 2011 Description / Buy
16 The Recent Weird 2011 Description / Buy
17 The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 4 2012 Description / Buy
18 Digital Rapture 2012 Description / Buy
19 Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2012 edition 2013 Description / Buy
20 Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2013 2013 Description / Buy
21 The Time Traveler's Almanac 2013 Description / Buy
22 Zombies: More Recent Dead 2014 Description / Buy
23 More Recent Weird 2015 Description / Buy
24 Shoreline of Infinity 8½: Edinburgh International Book Festival Special Edition 2017 Description / Buy
25 Fables from the Fountain 2018 Description / Buy
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The author started writing in 1999. While his first published novel was ‘Singularity Sky’, he had written a novella called ‘Atrocity Archive’ some years earlier that his newly acquired agent loved but also rejected because she didn’t expect anyone to publish it.

She argued that there was no way to identify the genre in which it could be marketed. It could have been horror, science fiction or humor. That scattered approach to storytelling drove the agent to compel Stross to pursue more mainstream stories.

So he temporarily shelved ‘Atrocity Archive’. Stross finally got it published in an obscure Scottish magazine, eventually attracting the interest of Golden Griffin, a small publisher in the US. He wrote ‘The Concrete Jungle’ for them. Golden Griffin chose to publish the story along with ‘Atrocity Archives’ in a volume also titled ‘The Atrocity Archives’.

While ‘Singularity Sky’ had attracted all the right attention, it was The Atrocity Archives and, in particular, ‘The Concrete Jungle’ that placed Charles Stross on the publishing map. The award it won finally convinced Stross’ agent of the potential some of the writer’s experimental stories held despite the marketing challenge they would present.

While Charles Stross went on to dip his toes into the thriller and Fantasy sub-genres, his fans continue to categorize him as a hardcore SF writer, primarily because of the intellectual approach the author always takes with his stories.

Born in 1964 in Leeds, England, Stross took an interest in Science Fiction at an early age. He read every notable work in the genre that he could find. His education led him into the medical field. Despite earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Pharmacy and putting the skills of his trade into practice, Stross decided to extend his educational journey by pursuing a post-graduate computer science degree from Bradford University.

Before 1999, he was a pretty competent programmer who produced literary works of a technical nature in his field of expertise. He continued along that same path, as a technical writer, even after landing an agent. But once fiction took a hold of his heart, he embraced it wholeheartedly, never looking back.

Charles Stross’ political views as a liberal democrat permeate a lot of the stories he writes. Stross expects science fiction to mirror the real world, to show readers what mankind could become, for better or for worse. He has always supported the concept of e-publishing, going so far as to upload some of his books online where his fans can read them for free.

He believes that young authors need the internet to grow but traditional publishing will continue to oppose it because it stifles their earnings.

Charles Stross Awards

Stross has received Hugo, British Science Fiction Association, Arthur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Prometheus Award nominations. He also won the Hugo and Prometheus Awards for ‘Iron Sunrise’ and ‘Glasshouse’.

Best Charles Stross Books

Stross’ fans love all the attention he injects into building the societies and communities which constitute the futuristic settings of his stories, with some of the best books in his bibliography including:

Singularity Sky: The Eschaton changed the destiny of Earth. A sentient AI created by mankind in the 21st Century, the Eschaton brought about the greatest technological revolution in human history. For all the blessings it delivered, the AI had one rule. Mankind was forbidden from tampering with time, lest they suffer the violent ire of the Eschaton.

Now the human race has gone to the stars, colonizing new worlds and creating a new society known as the New Republic. When an alien race descends upon the New Republic and gives its people a bevy of forbidden technologies, a spaceship engineer and a diplomat are dispatched to quell the resulting revolutionary turmoil before Eschaton takes drastic measures.

Atrocity Archives: Bob Howard’s world was boring. Yes, he worked for a secret government agency. However, while his fellow agents went on missions to save the world, the techie stayed behind to restore lost data. When Bob finally gets noticed and thrown into active duty, he is forced to face off against dimension-hopping terrorists and ancient deities with nefarious intentions.

When Does The Next Charles Stross book come out?

Charles Stross doesn't seem to have an upcoming book. Their newest book is Season of Skulls and was released on May, 16th 2023. It is the newest book in the Laundry Files Series.

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