elfs | Charlie Stross visits Seattle

Charlie Stross

Charlie Stross is in Seattle this week, and last night

fallenpegasus assembled a crowd of a dozen or so vibrant souls, including your humble gentleman pornographer, to a get-together at the Elysian Pub up on Capitol Hill. The premise of the fete was to keep poor Charlie awake until 11pm, at which point he would crash hard and, hopefully, arise the following morning with his circadian clock yanked halfway 'round the globe. The poor man had just spent eleven hours on a plane wedged into the economy seating experience complete with a woman and child sharing his row.

We met him at his hotel after he had managed to grab the briefest of showers and took him up to the pub. The last time I was in the Elysian, it was for Ron Bailey's Liberation Biology tour (a sort of pre-post-human polemic), at which I learned an awful lot more about Lincoln and the Civil War and the internal politics of the National Review Online than I did about liberation or biology.

The beer at the Elysian is gorgeous, as always: Dragonstooth, smooth, sweet and choclatey; and this season the Pumpkin Ale is flowing, and it smells delicious and tastes wonderful.

And just like last time, I learned more about the politics of sustainable urbanism, the relationship between Medieval Baebes and Miranda Sex Garden, and the "monetization of governmental stupidity" than I did anything at all about Charlie's books and writing. That said he was a wonderful guest, suprisingly full of verve for all the nerve-wracking sense that he'd been running for more than 24 hours straight, and quite charmng in his routine descriptions of driving across the UK "in a car about the size of this table." When I asked if meant the whole car or just the cabin, he said, "Oh, the whole car." Commisseration on geriatric cats, slow wordcount days, and the ongoing battle to find a decent cover artist were all discussed in details. Apparently the figure on the cover of Halting State is supposed to be Sue, all "decked out." For a novel set in Edinburgh, one publisher had to be talked out of using a London skyline. And so on.

Mission accomplished, we broke at 10:45, with time enough to pay the bill and take Charlie back to his hotel. The bill settled in true geek fashion, with one heck of a tip made even better when the bartender bought Charlie's beers for him "because you're one of my favorite authors." We made sure that Charlie thanked him before we left, only to have one of the patrons just sitting there go, "You're Charlie Stross? I really enjoyed The Atrocity Archives! Are you going to be speaking anywhere this week? Where can I find out?"

I love this town.

A taste of Charlie's writing and darker humors can be found in his story Maxo Signals [PDF], "an unfortunate solution to Fermi's Paradox."