Karl Schroeder

Sun of Suns is a perfect alignment of plot and setting. Schroeder wanted to write something in the vein of steampunk or space opera: sword fights on exploding battlecruisers, glittering 'civilized' cities and dank pirate hideaways, heroics and sacrifice and revenge written across the sky. A lesser author would just say 'screw realism' and do it: Schroeder actually does the world building to make it work.

Enter Virga, a 5000 mile bubble of air orbiting Vega, hemmed in by a shell of ice and show more light from within by artificial suns. Zero-G forests hide shoals of fish and birds Towns rotate to generate gravity, lest their inhabitants become enfeebled weightless spiders. Immense floating seas and fogbanks conceal pirate armadas, while jet-propelled men-of-war launch rocket barrages before closing to board. There are rumors that the whole thing is sustained by/protecting itself against post-human high technology. I'm not a meterologist, but the incredible weather of Virga and the ships that ply its sky are both awesome and pass my smell test.

After all that praise for the setting, it pains me to do anything less for the plot and characters, but they're merely good as opposed to great. Revenge is a major motivation, and contrasted against friendship, human decency, and the possibility to make something new. There are a lot more Virga books, which I'll read when I get the chance, but Sun of Suns stands on its own and then some. show less

Times being what they are, with the coronavirus attacking the world, and so many of us being affected in so many ways, it was a bit surreal listening to this book on Audible. I wouldn't call this dystopian, although it is set in a world where global warming has devastated the Earth, and the promise of capitalism is shown to be an empty vessel. Aside from using the an eff bomb repeatedly as a character contrivance, Stealing Worlds is an absolutely spectacular novel. Virtual and Mixed Reality, show more Live Action Role Playing (LARP), block-chain technology, politics, and revolution all have a place in this thriller by Karl Schroeder.
Sura Neelin is on the run after her father is murdered and she doesn’t even know who she is running from. The society has evolved into one of complete and constant surveillance, but she might have a chance in the virtual game world, using smart glasses and block-chain tech. His characters are distinctive and well-drawn, and as the plot moves along, I liked Sura more and more. Her first mentor, Compass, turns out to be a broken but gifted young woman, and Nancy Wu, who is the reader for this audiobook, brings Compass to life. The evolution of the game world economy and the smart tech of the world, with its " Internet of Things," is brilliantly conceived and makes for a mind-stretching read.
With all of the political gyrations I wondered how he would pull off the grandiose plot, but he stuck the landing, very satisfying. Highly recommended! show less

Karl Schroeder’s Virga sequence is undoubtedly one of the best science fiction series in recent years, and in my opinion even among the best ever. It is almost like a small encyclopedia of science fiction in itself in that it showcases so many of the forms the genre takes – planetary romance, golden age adventure story, hard science speculation, singularity and steampunk. And the wonder of the series is that it pulls all those elements into a believable and even plausible whole and turns show more them into a compulsive read. I really cannot praise this series enough and it should be on the reading list of everyone with even a passing interest in what science fiction is, has been and can be.

This fourth volume is a bit of a departure for Schroeder’s series – Pirate Sun resolved all the threads of the various characters introduced in Sun of Suns. The Sunless Countries introduces a new main character, a historian named Leal Maspeth, and also shifts emphasis somewhat – there is a lot about the big picture in the rest of the galaxy here, and for its ending the novel even ventures outside of Virga for the first time; also, similar to the development of Leal in this novel, it has less swashbuckling and significantly more politics than previous volumes. It is not less of an exciting read for that, and I already pre-ordered the fifth volume, Ashes of Candesce. show less

In 1967, kids, led by old lefties and poets, surrounded the Pentagon, put daisies in menacing rifle barrels, and engaged in a theatrical chant meant to levitate the building. A similar playful spirit of protest against our own surveillance state in Karl Schroeder’s near-future novel, Stealing Worlds. Sura, a young woman whose father has been killed while investigating wrongdoing in the oil industry, needs to get off the grid. But there are grid-connected cameras everywhere. What to do? Use show more the grid to defeat itself. She meets a woman named Compass who shows her how to spoof the system. As Paul Di Filippo puts it in his Locus review: “Compass is a representative of the gameworld/frameworld/larping counter-economy, where Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality converge to form a kind of quasi-potlatch, quasi-barter, quasi-communal, cryptocurrency ecosystem.” If you liked the messaging in Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, you will like Schroeder’s larping lark. Four stars. show less