Karl Schroeder

Infobox Writer
name = Karl Schroeder


caption =
birthdate = birth date and age|1962|9|4
birthplace = Brandon, Manitoba,
flagicon|Canada Canada
deathdate =
deathplace =
occupation = author, technology consultant
genre = Science fiction
movement =
notableworks = "Ventus", "Permanence"
influences =
influenced =
website = http://www.kschroeder.com/

Karl Schroeder (born September 4, 1962) is an award-winning Canadian science fiction author. His novels present far-future speculations on topics such as nanotechnology, terraforming, augmented reality and interstellar travel, and have a deeply philosophical streak. One of his concepts, known as "thalience", has gained some currency in the artificial intelligence and computer networking communities. [http://www.kschroeder.com/ Karl Schroeder official website] , accessed September, 2008.]

Biography

Schroeder was born into the Mennonite community in Brandon, Manitoba. He moved to Toronto, where he now lives with his wife and daughter, in 1986.

After publishing a dozen short stories, Schroeder published his first novel, "Ventus", in 2000. He has published seven more novels and is co-author (with Cory Doctorow) of the self-help book "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Science Fiction".

He currently writes, teaches science fiction writing, and provides technology consulting services.

Bibliography

Novels

* "The Claus Effect" (with David Nickle). (Tesseract Books, 1997) ISBN 978-1-895836-35-6
* "Ventus" (Tor Books, 2000.) ISBN 978-0312871970
* "Permanence" (Tor Books, 2002.) ISBN 076530371X
* "Lady of Mazes" (Tor Books, 2005.) ISBN 978-0-7653-5078-7
* "Crisis in Zefra" (Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts, National Defense Canada; 2005.) ISBN 978-0662406433
* "Sun of Suns" (Tor Books, 2006.) ISBN 978-0-7653-5453-2
* "Queen of Candesce" (Tor Books, 2007.) ISBN 978-0-7653-1544-1
* "Pirate Sun" (Tor Books, 2008.) ISBN 978-0-7653-1545-8

hort Stories

* "The Great Worm". (Pierian Spring, Fall 1983.)
* "The Pools of Air". (Tesseracts3 anthology, Press Porcepic, 1991.) ISBN 978-0888782908
* "Hopscotch". (On Spec magazine, summer 1992.)
* "The Toy Mill" (with David Nickle). (Tesseracts4 anthology, Beach Holme Press, 1992.) ISBN 978-0888783226
* "Solitaire". (Figment magazine; Fall/Winter 1992.)
* "The Cold Convergence". (Figment magazine, spring 1993.)
* "Making Ghosts". (On Spec, Hard SF Issue, spring 1994.)
* "The Engine of Recall". (Aboriginal SF, Winter 1997.)
* "Ball of Blood". (Horrors! 365 Scary Stories anthology, Barnes and Noble, 1997). ISBN 9780760701416
* "Halo". (Tesseracts 5 anthology, Tesseract Books, 1996.) ISBN 978-1895836264
* "Dawn". (Tesseracts 7 anthology, Tesseract Books, 1999.) ISBN 978-1895836585
* "The Dragon of Pripyat". (Tesseracts 8 anthology, Tesseract Books, 1999.) ISBN 978-1895836615
* "Allegiances". (The Touch: Epidemic of the Millennium. iBooks, 2000.)
* "The Engine of Recall" (collection) (Red Deer Press, 2005.) ISBN 978-0889953451
* "Book, Theatre, and Wheel". (Solaris Book of New SF #2, Solaris, 2008.)
* "Mitigation". (Fast Forward #2, Pyr Books, 2009.)

Nonfiction

* "Merry Christmas, You Ungrateful Bastards". (On Spec Summer 1993.)
* "Warm Fuzziness: Quantum Mechanics and the New Age". (Transforum, August 1993.)
* " [http://www.sfcanada.ca/spring99/worldbuild.htm Worldbuilding] " (SF Canada, Spring 1999.)
* "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Science Fiction" (with Cory Doctorow). (MacMillan, 2000.) ISBN 978-0028639185
* "Traitor to Both Sides". (The New York Review of Science Fiction, April 2005.)

Awards

* 1982. Pierian Spring Best Story award for "The Great Worm".
* 1989. Context '89 fiction contest winner for "The Cold Convergence".
* 1993. Aurora Award for Best Short Work in English for "The Toy Mill".
* 2001. New York Times Notable book for "Ventus".
* 2003. Aurora Award for best Canadian SF novel for "Permanence".

Thalience

Thalience is a concept invented by Schroeder in "Ventus". The idea of thalience has been adopted by some members of the artificial intelligence community to describe the self-organizing properties of fine-grained distributed networks.Fact|date=May 2008 As presented in the novel, however, the concept may refer to the attempt to determine whether non-human sentient systems are truly independent minds, or whether they are merely "parrots" that give back to human researchers what the researchers expect to hear.Fact|date=May 2008 The novel says that the word was deliberately chosen as an allusion to "silent Thalia", the muse of Nature. However, "Ventus" also more consistently refers to thalience as a state of being.Fact|date=May 2008 Entities are considered "thalient" if they succeed in developing their own categories for understanding the world. [http://tersesystems.com/post/400060.jhtml Thalience and the Semantic Web] , January 16, 2003, accessed September, 2008.]

References

External links

* [http://www.kschroeder.com/ Official site] - including Creative Commons-licensed text of some of his works
*
* [http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408521 Permanence - An Adaptationist Solution to Fermi's Paradox? by Milan M. Cirkovic]
* [http://www.aob.bg.ac.yu/~mcirkovic/cir-170.pdf Adaptationism Fails to Resolve Fermi’s Paradox, Serbian Astronomical Journal, Vol. 170, pp. 89-100 (2005), by Milan Cirkovic with Ivana Dragicevic and Tanja Beric-Bjedov.]
*" [http://smallworldpodcast.com/?p=310 Interview with Karl Schroeder] " - [http://smallworldpodcast.com small WORLD Podcast] 2006

Persondata
NAME=Schroeder, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Author. Technology consultant.
DATE OF BIRTH=1962-09-04
PLACE OF BIRTH=Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=