Notices by Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)

#WritersCoffeeClub #WritingCommunity

20th May 2026. If not your current genre, what genre would you write?

This is your daily scheduled reminder that genres are just marketing labels.

I write SF/F, and I had a breakout success in 2007 with a novel about crime inside MMOs. In the UK, it hit its fourth hardcover reprint within 2 weeks of publication and my subsequent book advances quadrupled!

Turns out it went gold because Waterstones systematically misfiled it under "crime", not SF/F …

#ScribesAndMakers 19 May: You get locked in Ikea for a week. What will you build?

A MODEL OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZA MADE OUT OF SWEDISH MEATBALLS

A pyramid of all the meatballs in the store, with a core of lingonberry jam so that when they try to dismantle the reeking pile of unrefrigerated meat a week later it bleeds all over the floor as it collapses.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@AnnaAnthro/116533225314671628

Prediction: if any "radically pro-transgender" violent group is ever discovered, it will eventually be traced back to an FBI black operation started under Kash Patel (or to the KGB, or similar).

With the right, it's ALWAYS projection.

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@KevinCarson1/116523070621752364

Reminder that you *can* delete the Chrome AI model this way, but Google can quite easily bring it back by just picking a new name and set of flags for their shitbaggery.

The only 100% effective solution is to erase Chrome.

Welp, it's taken me a few days to get round to it, but I have just now deleted Chrome (and it's associated LLM malware downloads) from ALL my Macs. Fucker was taking up 6.5Gb of space on my Macbook Neo. Utterly unacceptable bullshit on a machine that starts with 256Gb of storage, even if I *wanted* the AI features (I don't).

Took a while because I had to transfer all my extensions and continuously open tabs across into Safari (I mainly use Firefox, but some sites render badly in FF.)

#WritersCoffeeClub May 1st: Workers' Day: What can we do to support and protect other writers, not only now, but in the future as well?

Abolish capitalism; replace it with fully automated luxury gay space communism forever.

Optional but recommended: guillotine all the billionaires (and anyone who aspires to become a billionaire) forever.

Axiom 1: We are living in the future.

Axiom 2: The future *really* sucks.

By induction: the next future will suck even harder.

By SF author brain: if this goes on, how sucky a future can I imagine?

(I mean, we've already gotten to live in a planet ruled by fricken' Bond Villains, how hard can you go?)

#WritersCoffeeClub 27 April: Share a possibly unpopular opinion. 👀 (Be kind!)

If you want to write fiction, be aware that it is almost impossible to achieve fame and fortune by being a good writer: there's a near-infinite supply of good writers!

Marketing skills and personal connections matter more than ability when it comes to achieving visibility. And without visibility, you're roadkill.

(Raw ability can make up for some of this. Hard work and high output helps, and there's always luck.)

@Gargron

Suggestion: have you considered making coffee mugs? Thing about coffee mugs is, you don't out-grow them and they don't fade in the wash, shrink, or develop unsightly holes. Also they usually come in just one size, so simpler to keep in stock.

#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 24 Share a silly mistake you've made while writing.

Character name changes. If for some reason you change the name of a character you *really* need to double-check that it's changed *everywhere*. Hint: regular expressions and global *conditional* search/replace are your tools. Also how to manage word stemming with regexps. Then triple-check *everything*. Otherwise—guaranteed—you'll flip a character's name in one paragraph and the internet will never let you forget it!

@mjg59

I'm a full-time professional novelist. Have been for 25 years. Before that I was a software dev. From the inside, the cognitive experiences of writing prose fiction and writing software *feel identical*. The creativity exists outside the words, and most of the phrases and grammar I use are unoriginal.

Ball's back in your court.

Looking for silver linings in the LLM/data centre bubble, I see only two (and they're kinda drab):

1. A lot of private equity investors will lose their shirts (and good riddance).

2. The monstrous demand for power will lead to over-provisioning and investment in grid and sustainable energy. The gas peakers will go away but any renewable build-out will remain.

Anything else?

SCREAM: https://boat.horse/clock/index.html

Obviously this clock can only be improved by the addition of a language setting. And maybe timezones.

Holy shit.

Hungary’s New Leader Reveals Viktor Orbán Was Paying CPAC

Magyar noted that his government will be investigating Orbán’s expenditures, and will no longer finance CPAC or other right-wing institutions abroad.

https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-victor-orban-paying-cpac

What I REALLY want to know about the news-behind-the-news is, why is Melania suddenly holding press conferences to say that she didn't know nothin' about Jeffrey Epstein and *especially* wasn't having a relationship with him?

I mean, with the right it's ALWAYS projection, right? So if she runs true to form for a conservative this probably means she had an affair with Ghislaine Maxwell.

JERUSALEM, April 9 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long-running corruption trial will resume on Sunday, the courts' spokesperson said on Thursday, hours after Israel lifted a state of emergency imposed over its war with Iran.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/halt-iran-attacks-means-netanyahus-corruption-trial-will-resume-sunday-2026-04-09/

(So I now expect Israel to attack Iran after sundown on Saturday.)

RE: https://techhub.social/@rayckeith/116370449957346533

Didn't Windows 95 do this too?!?

For fuck's sake, Apple, get your shit together and stop reinventing 30 year old 32 bit Windows bugs!

About trans rights:

They're a wedge issue. If you think it's okay to deprive trans people of the right to exist in the public sphere then you're saying human rights are conditional and/or can be withdrawn. Which puts you on a slippery slope to no human rights for anyone.

When you trace the roots of the modern anti-trans movement they boil down to some combination of bigotry and billionaire bullshit— the oligarchs think rights are for the rich.

So: trans-rights are human rights. No exceptions.

RE: https://mstdn.social/@Remittancegirl/116311624371729823

We REALLY need to reintroduce the Roman custom of Damnatio Memoriae—"damnation of memory", excision of a name and person from the written record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae

ACOUP is grimly pessimistic about the Iran war: "it is not possible for two sides to both win a war. But it is absolutely possible for both sides to lose; mutual ruin is an option." https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/