Today my guest on Singularity 1 on 1 is award winning science fiction author Charles Stross. It was his seminal singularity book Accelerando that not only won the 2006 Locus Award (in addition to being a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and on the final ballot for the Hugo Award) but was also at least in part responsible for my launching of SingularitySymposium.com and SingularityWeblog.com.

During my conversation with Charlie we discuss issues such as: his early interest in and love for science fiction; his work as a “code monkey” for a start up company during the first dot com boom of the late nineties and the resulting short sci fi story Lobsters (which eventually turned into Accelerando); his upcoming book Rule 34; his take on the human condition, brain uploading, the technological singularity and our chances of surviving it.

Charlie Stross: The World is Complicated. Elegant Narratives Explaining Everything Are Wrong!

Singularity.FM is the first and best known singularity podcast - the place where we interview the future. 

Singularity.FM is a series of singularity podcast interviews with the best scientists, writers, entrepreneurs, film-makers, philosophers and artists, debating issues such as the technological singularity, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, life-extension and ethics.

Past guests of this singularity podcast include people such as Ray Kurzweil, Peter Diamandis, Noam Chomsky, Stuart Hameroff, Marvin Minsky, Aubrey de Grey, Max More, Michio Kaku, Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross and many, many others.

"When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else." 
-- David Brin

"Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?" 
-- David Brin

"There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts." 
-- Steven Pinker

"With violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution." 
-- Steven Pinker

"I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift." 
-- Steven Pinker

"If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important." 
-- Steven Pinker

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
-- Frank Zappa