Charles Stross

Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born Leeds, October 18, 1964) is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His works range from science fiction and Lovecraftian horror to fantasy. In the 1970s and 80s, Stross published some role-playing game articles for Advanced Dungeons &amp; Dragons in the White Dwarf magazine, and some of his creatures, such as the death knight, githyanki, githzerai, and slaad (a chaotic race notable for their rigid caste system) were later published in the Fiend Folio monster compendium.

Background
Born in Leeds, England, Stross knew he wanted to be a science fiction writer from the age of six. He didn't really get started until his early teens (when his sister loaned him a manual typewriter around the time he was getting heavily into Dungeons and Dragons). He made his first commercial for-money sale to Interzone in 1986, and sold around a dozen stories elsewhere throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s before taking a break from his writing career. He began writing fiction again in 1998.

Stross studied at university in London and qualified as a Pharmacist. He later went back to university in Bradford and did a postgraduate degree in computer science. After several jobs in the technology sector around London, initially in graphics supercomputing and then in the UNIX industry, he emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, and diversified into web consultancy.

Stross changed his job early in 2000, around the time when the first dot-com boom was coming to an end, but he was writing a monthly Linux column for Computer Shopper, and turned this into a full time career as a freelance journalist specialising in Linux and free software. His fiction became successful in the US, with five novel sales and several Hugo nominations in the space of two years.

He now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feorag, two cats and several thousand books.