History Creator / KenMacLeod

Not to be confused with Creator/KevinMacLeod.

Not to be confused with Music/KevinMacLeod

* BigBrotherIsWatching: a defining element of ''Intrusion''.

* FasterThanLightTravel:
** ''Newton's Wake'' features both a network of wormholes (called the Skein), and starships with warp drives (which are ridiculously expensive to build, but nonetheless possessed by every major galactic power). Both are based on technology left behind by super-human intelligences after a particularly violent technological singularity.

* FutureImperfect

Not to be confused with Music/KevinMacleod

His novels ''The Sky Road'', ''Cosmonaut Keep'', and ''Learning the World'' were nominated for the HugoAward, and ''The Cassini Division'' was nominated for a UsefulNotes/{{Nebula|Award}}.

* {{Ruritania}}: The Former Soviet Autonomous Region of Krassnia in ''The Restoration Game''. The book is mostly set in [[TheNewTens the present]], in which Krassnia is a bit of the Georgia/Chechnya border with its own language and dreams of independence, but has extensive {{Flashback}}s to Krassnia under the Soviets in TheThirties and TheEighties and as part of the [[TsaristRussia Russian Empire]] in TheEdwardianEra. The name is a ShoutOut to an allegory by J.B.S. Haldane, in which the Republic of Krassnia has "materialism" as a state religion, and this very much informs the character of [=MacLeod=]'s Krassnia.

His novels ''The Sky Road'', ''Cosmonaut Keep'', and ''Learning the World'' were nominated for the HugoAward, and ''The Cassini Division'' was nominated for a {{Nebula|Award}}.

* Arcwords: In ''The Night Sessions'': "capitalism with Russian characteristics" (rule of the BIZNESMENI); "boots in the pews".

Ken [=MacLeod=] is a Scottish science fiction writer. His works include the Fall Revolution series, the Engines of Light trilogy, and numerous stand-alone novels.

The Literature/FallRevolution series consists of:
* ''The Star Fraction''
* ''The Stone Canal''
* ''The Cassini Division''
* ''The Sky Road''

!! His works provide examples of:

* BalkanizeMe: ''The Star Fraction'' has a Balkanised UK, and mentions the UN having over two thousand national flags flying outside.

* BrainUploading: The Fall Revolution books have brain backups, or minds that get copied from brain to computer and back to brain.
* BrownNote: ''The Cassini Division'' mentions the Langford Visual Hack, a ShoutOut to Creator/DavidLangford's "blit" stories:
-->And yes, I ''know'' the Langford hack is just a viral meme in its own right, replicating down the centuries like an old joke, wasting resources every time we act on the insignicant off chance that if someone could think of it, somehow it could be done. What kind of twisted mind ''starts'' these things?

** ''The Cassini Division'' uses wormholes and time travel to have a paradox-free FTL system. The end of the wormhole where you want to go is carried by an STL vessel to the destination. Once established, to go from A to B you make the trip instantaneously but jump forward in time from A's point of view: if you go 5 light years, you exit the wormhole at B five years after you left (from A's perspective). If you travel from B to A, you go ''back'' in time the same amount, so from B's perspective you arrive at A 5 years before you left. Combinations of wormholes that create paradoxes fall apart, so you can't leave A and travel back in time to before you left. This means that you can have two systems that have "real time" communication with each other through the wormhole that are nevertheless separated in time from one another.

* JustAMachine: Opinion of AI in the Fall Revolution series tends to be divided. Truly synthetic intelligences and human uploads are often considered to be "flatlines"; a realistic simulation of a sentience but nothing going on beneath the surface. They tend to be classed as property rather than individuals. The Fast Folk, an AI and upload civilisation, are treated as horrifyingly dangerous but still "people", in a sense.

* NarratorAllAlong: In ''The Stone Canal'', the odd chapters are about (amongst other things) a man called Jon Wilde being cloned by a [[BrainUploading robot with his personality]] called Jay-Dub. The even chapters are Wilde's memoir. It's not until chapter 18 that [[spoiler:it becomes clear the Wilde narrating the even chapters is the robot, not the clone]].

* TheSingularity: Addressed in several works, including the Fall Revolution series and ''Newton's Wake''.

* TomeOfEldritchLore: In ''The Cassini Division'' two characters peruse a market stall selling old books. One tome, ''Home Workshop Nanotech'', is the science-fictional equivalent of a tome of eldritch lore, being a mysterious ancient book containing world-shattering knowledge of things man was not meant to meddle with.

The Fall Revolution series consists of:

* In ''The Stone Canal'' by Creator/KenMacLeod, the odd chapters are about (amongst other things) a man called Jon Wilde being cloned by a [[BrainUploading robot with his personality]] called Jay-Dub. The even chapters are Wilde's memoir. It's not until chapter 18 that [[spoiler:it becomes clear the Wilde narrating the even chapters is the robot, not the clone]].
* NarratorAllAlong: In ''The Stone Canal''.

* FasterThanLightTravel: ''Newton's Wake'' features both a network of wormholes (called the Skein), and starships with warp drives (which are ridiculously expensive to build, but nonetheless possessed by every major galactic power). Both are based on technology left behind by super-human intelligences after a particularly violent technological singularity.