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Ken MacLeod

Scottish science fiction writer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ken MacLeod
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For other people named Ken MacLeod, see Ken MacLeod (disambiguation).

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. In 2024 MacLeod was one of the Guests of Honour at the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow.[1]

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Ken and Carol MacLeod at Boskone 43, 2006

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.

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Biography

MacLeod was born in Stornoway, Scotland in 1954.[2] 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.[3] He was a Trotskyist activist in the 1970s and early 1980s[4] MacLeod is opposed to Scottish independence.[5]

Personal life

Married with two children,[2] he lived in South Queensferry near Edinburgh before moving to Gourock, on the Firth of Clyde, in June 2017.[6]

Writing

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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).[7] 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,[8][9] though unlike a majority of techno-utopians, he has expressed great scepticism over the possibility and especially over the desirability of strong AI.[8]

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.[10] 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[11]). 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 Archived 8 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine (2003; ISBN 0-903007-02-9), 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

Other work

  • Newton's Wake: A Space Opera (2004; US paperback edition ISBN 0-7653-4422-X) – BSFA nominee, 2004;[20] Campbell Award nominee, 2005[21]
  • Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact (2005; UK hardback edition ISBN 1-84149-343-0) Prometheus Award winner 2006; Hugo, Locus SF, Campbell and Clarke Awards nominee, 2006;[22] BSFA nominee, 2005[21]
  • "The Highway Men" (2006; UK edition ISBN 1-905207-06-9)
  • The Execution Channel (2007; UK hardback edition ISBN 978-1841493480) – BSFA Award nominee, 2007;[23] Campbell, and Clarke Awards nominee, 2008[24]
  • The Night Sessions (2008; UK hardback edition ISBN 978-1841496511) – Winner Best Novel 2008 BSFA[24]
  • 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."[25]
  • 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.[25]
  • Descent (2014):[26] "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."[25]

Short fiction

Collections

  • Poems & Polemics (2001; Rune Press: Minneapolis, MN) Chapbook of non-fiction and poetry.
  • Giant Lizards From Another Star (2006; US trade hardcover ISBN 1-886778-62-0) Collected fiction and nonfiction.
  • A Jura for Julia (2024; UK hardcover ISBN 978-1-914953-83-5) Collected fiction.
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References

External links

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