Charlie Stross has got married

I first met Charlie when I joined DataCash in 1998. I was the third Edinburgh employee, in an office so small that Dave and I had to agree on who got to lean back in their chair that day.

DataCash changed premises three times, reversed into the London stock market, gained suddenly and then lost bit by bit a most amazingly kick-ass developer team, and only had to survive one really scary Millennium Bug-related catastrophe. The company lost a year’s worth of development due to fuckwit management - Charlie left during this time, as did I a few months later - but the fuckwit in question got his come-uppance and the company appears to have recovered since then. It’s releasing new stuff, and has renamed itself DataCash, after a brief hiatus as “Auxinet” (AUX being the point where David Bailey, the chairman, gave up going through the dictionary looking for a new name, I understand).

I thought I’d done well, by joining UK2 (I was young and naive); pah. After about two years of being the resident Linux hack for the entire UK IT publishing industry, Charlie finally got a shedload of book deals just as the Linux freelance industry was drying up. He’s now in the mind-bogglingly envious position of having been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula three times in total and of having book deals for God knows how many novels (of which none of at least 5 are available in the UK, unless you count a short story volume and, of course, back-issues of Asimov’s).

I mean, how great is this: Charlie sits up late one evening with an idea, thinks about it for at most a fortnight, then starts writing furiously, and three weeks later he’s got a first draft that makes his editor complain at him - because the bastard made her stay up until she’d finished the book, and as someone who now had a 6-month-old child she’d promised not to do that any more. They’re now plotting on releasing it in good time for Oscar season Hugo/Nebula season.

I really can only wish Charlie and Karen/Feorag (she has the same attitude to names as my in-laws, it appears) all the best; they won’t need it, as they’ve been living together for the last 10 years, and I really can’t see them separating any time soon. We thought we were special by cutting our wedding cake with an axe (our cake-baker had thoughtfully provided a raspberry jam die-pack); Feorag walked into the registry office preceded by two members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. As her bridesmaids. And had to nip off to their flat to get changed out of her wedding dress, on the basis that she had to pack to go to Amsterdam at 6am the day after, and if she was still wearing her corset she might set off metal-detectors something rotten.

Charlie’s blog announcement is where I’ve cribbed the best gags from; random geeks whose names I never knew / have forgotten started uploading a whole bunch of photos to the web before we even had food. Start here (and spot Charlie’s “maybe I can avoid a day’s pissing about” attempts at doubling up wedding and back cover author photographs). Quick picks: gorgeously-cute couple photo, steps, happy, we’ve got the difficult bit over, now let’s get food and booze, I’ll tell you the punchline when the family have gone, yes, I am The Bride - got a problem with that? (see also start of page 4), OK I’ll use this as my inside-back-cover author photograph, and, of course, she who controls the beer controls the world.