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Downloads

I've made my first novel, Ventus, available as a free download, as well as excerpts from two of the Virga books.  I am looking forward to putting up a number of short stories in the near future.

Complete novel:  Ventus

 

To celebrate the August, 2007 publication of Queen of Candesce, I decided to re-release my first novel as an eBook. You can download it from this page. Ventus was first published by Tor Books in 2000, and and you can still buy it; to everyone who would just like to sample my work, I hope you enjoy this version.

I've released this book under a Creative Commons license, which means you can read it and distribute it freely, but not make derivative works or sell it.

Book Excerpts:  Sun of Suns and Pirate Sun

I've made large tracts of these two Virga books available.  If you want to find out what the Virga universe is all about, you can check it out here:

Major Foresight Project:  Crisis in Zefra

In spring 2005, the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada (that is to say, the army) hired me to write a dramatized future military scenario.  The book-length work, Crisis in Zefra, was set in a mythical African city-state, about 20 years in the future, and concerned a group of Canadian peacekeepers who are trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency.  The project ran to 27,000 words and was published by the army as a bound paperback book.

If you'd like to read Crisis in Zefra, you can download it in PDF form.

Short Stories

I'll be adding new stories here periodically.  First of all, you can try my Aurora-award nominated short story "Hopscotch."  The year this was nominated, another of my stories was also nominated:  "The Toy Mill," which I wrote with David Nickle.  "The Toy Mill" won the award; but I've always been fond of "Hopscotch."  Here it is, in its entirety excerpted from my collection The Engine of Recall.

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Writer in Residence in 2010

February 1 to May 31 at the Merril Collection Public Library in Toronto

Toronto Public Library has put up its web page detailing my writer in residence tenure this spring.  That means I can reveal the details here too; I'll give you some here, but I'll also be placing the events into my calendar, which you can access at any time through the "Events" menu item on the left of the site's window (or the "upcoming events" box on the right).

I will also be blogging on the TPL website about writing as a process, an art, and a career.

Here's how to participate

Submit your manuscript for an opportunity to have a one-on-one evaluation with me or attend the writer-in-residencereadings and workshops.

Karl Schroeder
  • Manuscripts should be sent via email to Karl Schroeder, writer in residence at the Merril Collection.
  • All manuscripts should include your name, address, phone number and e-mail address.
  • Manuscripts should be 5,000 words in length. I will read only the first 5,000 words of longer submissions and base his comments on that word length.
  • After your manuscript has been read, the Merril Collection staff will contact you and book an appointment for you to discuss your writing.
  • I'lll will need 1 –2 weeks lead time in order to read submissions before an appointment is booked.
  • The library reserves the right to limit the number of manuscripts accepted.
  • Toronto Public Library is not responsible for returning manuscripts. Please submit a COPY of your work.

 

My OSCON '09 Talk

Here's the talk I gave at OSCON '09 (The O'Reilly Open Source conference, held in July 2009 in San Jose).  The talk has been very well received, garnering about ten times as many views as most of the other speakers (though of course for all I know, that could be due to people visiting it to laugh at my ideas).  Anyway, here it is:

Back to School for My Masters Degree

It's official:  over the next two years I'll be working towards garnering a Masters in Strategic Foresight from the Ontario College of Art and Design.  This will formalize my skills and experience in an area where I already do a good deal of work--foresight studies, also called futures study or just futurism.

Flying cars

 

I'm already a futurist, I suppose, though for me at least that term tends to conjure images of chrome-domed technophiles ranting about how we're all going to have flying cars in our driveways in ten years.  Technology foresight, which is what I specialize in, is less ivory-tower and more inclusive, however, because it involves the contribution of stakeholders in imagining both the scenarios and the probabilities attached to them.

 

I hasten to add that I won't be doing this work instead of my SF writing; I will be doing it in addition to writing.  I'm still deeply committed to my science fiction and to writing in all its forms.  What this degree program will do is give me more tools for my workshop, allowing me to approach the study of the future from more directions.  It's all good.

 
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Announcement
On January 29, 1010, Amazon.com removed all books by MacMillan and its affiliates from sale in its online bookstore. Since my books were arbitrarily included in this sweeping and unprecedented price war, I will no longer be linking to Amazon.com from my site, either now or in the future.