Search - List of Books by Karl Schroeder
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.
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. A prequel to Ventus, Lady of Mazes, was published in 2005. 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. Shroeder currently writes, teaches science fiction writing, and provides technology consulting services.
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. 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. 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. Entities are considered "thalient" if they succeed in developing their own categories for understanding the world.
- 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.
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
The Virga series
- 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
- The Sunless Countries (Tor Books, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-7653-2076-6
Short 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.)
- To Hie from Far Cilenia. (Metatropolis, Tor, 2010). ISBN 978-0765327109
Nonfiction
- Merry Christmas, You Ungrateful Bastards. (On Spec Summer 1993.)
- Warm Fuzziness: Quantum Mechanics and the New Age. (Transforum, August 1993.)
- 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.)
