This month's Locus magazine features Charlie Stross Brown's interview with Karl Schroeder, the author of such brilliant sf novels as "Permanence" and "Ventus."
"My hometown of Brandon had a population of about 45,000 and a university, so there was an interesting mix of people: intellectuals, farmers… (it also had one of the province's largest mental institutions). The one thing I can trade on in my background is that I came from a community that always considered itself to be outsiders. (The other SF writer to come from the Mennonites was A.E. van Vogt.) The favorite catch phrase of the Mennonites was, 'In the world, but not of the world.' Profoundly suspicious of politics, of the entire apparatus of civilization, even of organization on the level of cities, but very intellectual because of the Protestant requirement that each person be their own Bible scholar. You think for yourself, and you decide moral issues for yourself. So there was a tradition of being simultaneously isolationist and required to think which came out in my parents, both iconoclastic in their own way. I thought of myself as an outsider in a lot of ways as I was growing up. Not in a bad way; more as an observer. I often find myself thinking as an observer of science fiction rather than as a participant.
"My mother wrote a couple of romances when I was a kid, and I always saw books in our bookshelf with 'Schroeder' on the spine. (We pronounce the name 'Schrayder,' but I don't mind being called 'Schroder.') So I naturally assumed everyone wrote, and it was obviously easy if my mom could do it! I intended to be famous by the time I was 16, and rich by the time I was 20. Curiously, it didn't pan out!"
Karl and I also co-wrote "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction."
Sorry, this interview was conducted by Locus Publisher Charlie Brown, not Charlie Stross. An embarassment of Charlies.
