Ken MacLeod
From SciFi/Fantasy Wiki
Ken MacLeod is an award-winning Scottish science fiction writer, lives near Edinburgh. He was born on born on August 2, 1954, graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology.
His novels often explore socialism, communism and anarchism political ideas, most particularly the variants of Trotskyism and "anarcho-capitalism" and extreme economic libertarianism. His works often expose readers to the more hopeful but disappointed political anticipations of the New Left of the 1960s.
Sometimes described as the "Scottish Bruce Sterling," MacLeod's technical themes encompass singularity, divergent human cultural evolution and transhumanism cyborg-resurrection. MacLeod's general outlook can be best described as techno-progressive, though unlike a majority of tech-progressives, he has expressed great scepticism over the possibility and especially over the desirability of Strong AI.
He is known for his constant in-joking and punning on the intersection between socialist ideologies and computer programming. 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 "International Workers of the World Wide Web", or the Webblies, a reference to the Industrial Workers of the World, who are nicknamed the Wobblies.
He is part of a new generation of British science fiction writers, who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross and Liz Williams.
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