Ken MacLeod | |
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Addressing the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention, Glasgow, August 2005
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Born | Kenneth Macrae MacLeod 2 August 1954 Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland |
Occupation | Writer |
Genre | science fiction |
Website | |
kenmacleod |
Kenneth Macrae "Ken" MacLeod (born 2 August 1954) is a Scottish science fiction writer.
MacLeod was born in Stornoway, Scotland on 2 August 1954. He graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics. He was a Trotskyist activist in the 1970s and early 1980s and is married and has two children. He lives in South Queensferry near Edinburgh.
MacLeod is opposed to Scottish independence.
He is part of a group of British science fiction writers who specialise in hard science fiction and space opera. His contemporaries include Stephen Baxter, Iain M. Banks, Paul J. McAuley, Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Charles Stross, Richard Morgan, and Liz Williams.
His science fiction novels often explore socialist, communist, and anarchist political ideas, most particularly the variants of Trotskyism and anarcho-capitalism or extreme economic libertarianism. Technical themes encompass singularities, divergent human cultural evolution, and post-human cyborg-resurrection. MacLeod's general outlook can be best described as techno-utopian socialist, though unlike a majority of techno-utopians, he has expressed great scepticism over the possibility and especially over the desirability of strong AI.