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Singularity Sky

Singularity Sky is a science fiction novel by British writer Charles Stross, published in 2003. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2004. A sequel, Iron Sunrise, was published that same year. Together the two are referred to as the Eschaton novels, after a near-godlike intelligence that exists in both.

The novel follows the ill-fated military campaign by a repressive state, the New Republic, to retaliate for a perceived invasion of one of its colony worlds. In actuality, the planet has been visited by the Festival, a technologically advanced alien or posthuman race that rewards its hosts for "entertaining" them by granting whatever the entertainer wishes, including the Festival's own technology. This causes extensive social, economic and political disruption to the colony, which was generally limited by the New Republic to technology equivalent to that found on Earth during the Industrial Revolution. Aboard the New Republic's flagship, an engineer and intelligence operative from Earth covertly attempt to prevent the use of a forbidden technology—and fall in love along the way.

Themes of the novel include transhumanism, the impact of a sudden technological singularity on a repressive society, and the need for information to be free (the novel's elaboration of the latter theme helped to inspire a proposal to give every Afghan a free mobile phone to combat the Taliban ). Its narrative encompasses space opera and elements of steampunk and science fantasy. Intertwined within are social and political satire, and Stross's trademark dark humour and subtle literary and cultural allusions.

Stross wrote the novel during the late 1990s, his first attempt at the form. It was not his first novel to be published, but it was the first to be originally published in book form. Its original title, Festival of Fools, was changed to avoid confusion with Richard Paul Russo's Ship of Fools.

Background
Singularity Sky takes place roughly in the early 23rd century, around 150 years after an event referred to by the characters as the Singularity. Shortly after the Earth's population topped 10 billion, computing technology began reaching the point where artificial intelligence could exceed that of humans through the use of closed timelike curves to send information to its past. Suddenly, one day, 90% of the population inexplicably disappeared.

Messages left behind, both on computer networks and in monuments placed on the Earth and other planets of the inner Solar System carry a short statement from the apparent perpetrator of this event: ""I am the Eschaton; I am not your God. I am descended from you, and exist in your future. Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.""

Earth collapses politically and economically in the wake of this population crash; the Internet Engineering Task Force eventually assumes the mantle of the United Nations, or at least its altruistic mission and charitable functions. Anarchism replaces the Westphalian nation-states; in the novel the UN is described as having 900 of the planet's 15,000 polities as members, and its membership is not limited to polities.

A century later, the first interstellar missions, using quantum tunnelling-based jump drives to provide effective faster-than-light travel without violating causality, are launched. One that reaches Barnard's Star finds what happened to those who disappeared from Earth: they were sent to colonise other planets via wormholes that took them back one year in time for every light-year (ly) the star was from Earth. Gradually, it is learned, these colonies were scattered across a 6,000-ly area of the galaxy, all with the same message from the Eschaton etched onto a prominent monument somewhere. There is also evidence that the Eschaton has enforced the "or else" through drastic measures, such as inducing supernovae or impact events on the civilisation that attempted to create causality-violating technology.

Earth and the colonies re-establish relations and trade. Some of the latter had regained the same, or higher, technological levels due in part to the "cornucopia machines", molecular assemblers that can recreate objects in predefined patterns or duplicate others, the Eschaton left them with. Transhumanist technologies that came into being before or during the Singularity, such as cybernetic implants, anti-aging and life extension treatments, are in wide use. Spaceships use antimatter, fusion and electron-sized black holes as propulsion.

Some colonies, however, rejected or restricted use of advanced technology for social, cultural or political reasons, and instead of devolving into anarchism as Earth did, have replicated politically restrictive states from Earth's history. The novel takes place on two planets of one such polity, the New Republic. Its original settlers were predominantly from Eastern Europe, where many recalled the economic dislocation that followed the fall of communism there. The victorious side in an earlier civil war destroyed the sole remaining cornucopia machine, and imposed a socially and politically repressive feudalist regime that limits most technology to a level consistent with Europe at the end of the 19th century to guarantee everyone a place in society, with accompanying Victorian social mores. Despite this, there are still those who rebel and plan uprisings, along similar lines to those that happened in the historical Eastern Europe of that era.

Plot
The Festival, a civilisation of uploaded minds, arrives at Rochard's World, an outlying colony of the New Republic. It begins breaking down objects in the system to make technology for its stay. Then it begins making contact with the inhabitants of the planet by dropping cell phones, forbidden to most citizens of the planet, from low orbit.

Those who pick them up hear the Festival, "Entertain us," it asks, "and we will give you what you want." Interlocutors who successfully entertain the Festival by telling it something it has not heard are rewarded with anything they wish for. At first they request food or other modest needs, but then Burya Rubenstein, exiled to the colony for his role in leading an uprising, asks for a cornucopia machine in return for a political tract on the disruptive effect a sudden singularity would have on repressive regimes. Within days the theory becomes reality, as a post-scarcity economy develops and the government is threatened by Rubenstein's uprising and its advanced weaponry. A naval detachment challenges the Festival but is destroyed.

In the New Republic's capital city of New Prague, 40 light-years away, deep-cover UN agent Rachel Mansour keeps a close eye as the New Republic prepares a military response. Not only does the New Republic misunderstand the Festival, it seriously underestimates its military capabilities. Of greater concern to Rachel is that it may be planning to approach Rochard's World via a closed timelike loop, arriving there shortly after the Festival did, but earlier than the Navy left the capital. If the Eschaton responds to this apparent violation of causality as the UN fears it might, many settled worlds could have to be evacuated. She recruits Martin Springfield, an Earth-based engineer who has been hired by the New Republic's Admiralty to upgrade its drive systems, to keep an eye out for any signs of such a plan. Unbeknownst to her, Martin is an agent of the Eschaton and has been assigned to sabotage the Admiralty's plan just slightly enough to make it seem unworkable.

Back on Rochard's World, Rubenstein is disappointed with the revolution. While it is successful militarily, the cadres he leads have become as rigid and inflexible as the hegemony they fight against. Late one night, while signing seemingly endless orders and communiqués, he is visited by Sister Stratagems the Seventh, a creature resembling a giant mole rat. She is one of the Critics who accompany the Festival. Normally they remain in orbit providing high-level commentary, but she has gone down to the surface to find out for herself why the inhabitants of Rochard's World seem uninterested in the Festival's wisdom.

Rachel drops her cover and is assigned to the flagship Lord Vanek as a diplomatic observer. Martin, too, has his contract extended so he can join the fleet on the voyage and finish the job. As the only two Terrans and civilians on board a voyage only they realise will end disastrously, they spend a lot of time together, their relationship deepening into love. The fleet travels a circuitous route, jumping four thousand years into the future, before reaching Rochard's World. Martin's 16-microsecond error in the drive code has worked, slightly delaying the fleet.

Sister Stratagems faults Rubenstein for the shortcomings of the revolution—it was foolish, she explains, for him to rely on revolutionary traditions in the midst of a singularity and its all-encompassing constant radical change. She takes him on a ride, in Baba Yaga's hut, to the northern city of Plotsk, where he might understand. Along the way he sees "miracles, wonders and abominations". The landscape in some places has been seriously altered. Many farms and their cybernetically-enhanced owners now float freely in geodesic spheres and self-replicating robots, some dangerous to humans, roam the countryside.

As the Lord Vanek approaches battle, Vassily Muller, a young secret police agent assigned to the ship arranges to have Martin arrested as a spy. He and the ship's head of security arrange a fake court-martial on the capital charge to trap their real target, Rachel, into revealing herself. It backfires when Rachel incapacitates everyone in the courtroom and rescues Martin. Back in her quarters, the two escape on a lifeboat she had her own cornucopia machine fabricate. Vassily and other crewmembers are sucked out into space when they attempt to break in afterwards; he alone survives, wearing emergency protective gear, and is eventually picked up by Rachel and Martin as they descend to Rochard's World, where they arrange, through the Critics, to meet Rubenstein.

The warships confront two Bouncers sent out by the Festival. The fleet's captain suspects a trap, but it seems at first that the New Republic's ships have the upper hand. However, eventually they realise they have been hit with grey goo and their own ships are being consumed. The senior staff escape. Monitoring the battle from their own lifeboat, Martin and Rachel are unsurprised by the outcome, and explain to an angry Vassily how, despite its lack of intentions, the Festival's visit indeed represented an existential threat to the Republic since information wants to be free.

At Plotsk, where skyscrapers of stratospheric height have been erected, Rubenstein and Sister Stratagems meet some of his former comrades, many of them now cyborgs, and realises that the revolution he started has now grown beyond needing him or any other leader. Many of the citizens of Rochard's World have transcended their humanity, joined the Festival or otherwise permanently modified themselves. Rubenstein himself is implanted with a brain/computer interface. When an anthropomorphised rabbit begs the assembled cadres for help finding his master, the former governor, they join him and Stratagems in looking for him.

They find the governor, who had been granted his wish to once again become a young boy with faithful animal companions, mummified on a hillside where the Festival saved him from zombification at the hand of the Mimes, another associated species, with an X-ray laser blast that left his body exposed to dangerous levels of ionizing radiation. He asks, via the implant connection, that he be allowed to join the Festival instead of remaining on the planet. As Rubenstein is considering this request, Martin and Rachel arrive. She gives Rubenstein a cornucopia machine, her original mission, which both realise is no longer necessary. Vassily appears and attempts to kill Rubenstein, identifying himself as his son, but Rachel stops him with a stun gun although he irreversibly damages the cornucopia machine in the process.

The Festival and its associated species leave for their next destination, and on the planet the population—survivors of a thousand years of technological progress compressed into one month—regroup. Those desiring to return to life under the New Republic settle in Novy Petrograd, where the senior officers from the Lord Vanek have re-established imperial authority. Rubenstein and the others go to Plotsk, where Martin and Rachel run a small shop offering "access to tools and ideas" until they can return to Earth nine months later.

Characters

 * Rachel Mansour, a black operations agent for the United Nations Committee on Multilateral Interstellar Disarmament. A 150-year-old native of Earth who appears to be in her 20s due to anti-aging treatments, she has cybernetic implants that can speed up her nervous system for short periods of time, usually in combat situations, but will render her unconscious if used for too long.
 * Martin Springfield, a freelance engineer originally from the People's Republic of West Yorkshire, although he has not lived there for 20 years. He has a daughter from a previous marriage he rarely sees. For the past ten years he has supplemented his income by working for the Eschaton, who contacts him under the name "Herman."
 * Vassily Muller, a young recruit to the Curator's Office, the secret police of the New Republic. He has worked hard to overcome the stigma of being Burya Rubenstein's son, and is his father's political opposite, fully committed to the ideologies of the New Republic.

The Lord Vanek

 * Admiral Kurtz, the aged war hero nominally in command of the entire fleet. After two strokes, he is suffering severe dementia and is confined to a wheelchair. He believes he is pregnant with an elephant.
 * Robard, his attendant, actually a high-ranking member of the secret police.
 * Captain Mirsky, a veteran and former instructor at the naval college who believes he never made flag rank due to his attempt to warn the Admiralty about enemies like the Festival that might use self-replicating robot weapons.
 * Ilya Murametz, his executive officer.
 * Chief Engineer Kravchuk.
 * Security Chief Sauer, who secretly resents Muller's presence aboard and arranges Martin's trial as a way to embarrass Muller and, by extension, his boss. It ends tragically for him.

Rochard's World

 * Burya Rubenstein, a onetime revolutionary leader sent to Rochard's World for 20 years of internal exile. He advocates for "Marxism-Gilderism", a libertarian political system using rhetoric similar to that used to promote communism. Its slogan is "from each according to his imagination, to each according to his need."
 * Oleg Timoshevsky, his lieutenant and an early adopter of the transhumanist technology offered by the Festival.
 * Sister Strategems the Seventh. One of the Critics. She leaves her race's orbital station to find more directly whether the Rochardians are sapient.
 * Duke Felix Politkovsky: Originally the governor of Rochard's World. Under fire, the Festival grants his wish to become a young boy again, with three loyal anthropomorphic animal companions, and have exciting and interesting adventures—a choice he eventually comes to regret. Ultimately he decides to leave the planet and join the Festival.
 * Mr. Rabbit: One of the younger Felix's animal companions, who helps protect him from the Mimes and leads the revolutionaries to find him.

The Festival and its entourage
The Festival is an upload civilisation, originally intended to repair galactic information networks, that travels from system to system via starwisps, building the facilities it needs from local materials when it arrives. It usually prefers to interact with other upload civilisations, but any will do in a pinch. It asks for information it is unfamiliar with from those it visits, and will make any kind of payment in exchange.

No individual member of the Festival makes an appearance in the novel. Traveling in the Festival's vast spare mindspace are a number of other upload species that are separate from them but part of every visit.

 * The Bouncers: The Festival's brute-force defence, used when "a big stick and a smile were all that was needed." During the novel three automated Bouncer ships take on the Lord Vanek and the rest of the New Republic's naval fleet; one of them is destroyed but the Bouncers' self-replicating robots eat all the opposing ships.
 * The Critics: A matriarchal culture that instantiates their physical bodies, which resemble large mole-rats, upon arrival at a new system. Despite their appearance, they are descended from humans and share similar brains. They pay for their passage by providing high-level commentary and analysis of the visited civilisation. During Singularity Sky, one of them, Sister of Stratagems the Seventh, leaves their orbital perch and goes to the planet's surface to better assess whether the Rochardians are truly sapient.
 * The Fringe: A subgroup of the Festival that uses the planet as a medium for art. Their projects range from the introduction of extraplanetary flora by the Flower Show to inducing solar flares to create aurora displays. They are considered potentially the Festival's most dangerous element, although this is more from their recklessness than design.
 * The Mimes: An offshoot of the Fringe that in the past suffered bit rot from a solar flare and has become corrupted. On a visited planet, the Mimes turn those they encounter into cyborg zombies that attempt to do likewise to others they encounter. It may have been a misguided attempt to communicate.

Themes
The novel's most prominent theme is the cyberpunk refrain that "information wants to be free". Once impediments to it such as the New Republic's methods of repression are removed, technological and material progress follows. Rachel says exactly that to the rescued Vassily as she, he and Martin escape the doomed Lord Vanek. "We've been trying to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn't listen. For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won't take no for an answer because it doesn't have an opinion on anything; it just is ... [On Earth, w]e had to admit that we couldn't prevent it. Trying to prevent it was worse than the disease itself ... We can live with a low background rate of [the negative consequences] more easily than we can live with total surveillance and total censorship of everything, all the time."

The Festival's function is described as "repair[ing] holes in the galactic information flow".

Singularity Sky also depicts the far-reaching implications of its title event. The arrival of the cornucopia machines and the cybernetic enhancements made available by the Festival force not only the collapse of the existing social, economic and political orders but prevent their replacement by Rubenstein's revolution. "People suddenly gifted with infinite wealth and knowledge rapidly learned that they didn't need a government—and this was true as much for members of the underground as for the workers and peasants they strove to mobilize." Martin describes it to Vassily as "what in our business we call a consensus reality excursion; people went a little crazy, that's all. A sudden overdose of change; immortality, bioengineering, weakly superhuman AI arbeiters, nanotechnology, that sort of thing. It isn't an attack."

History
Singularity Sky was a younger Stross's first attempt at a novel, and his first novel first published in book form.

Development
In the early 1990s, before actively beginning his writing career, Stross had wanted to do space opera, the subgenre of science fiction built around space battles and adventures. As part of his worldbuilding, he needed to have a diverse group of human colonies scattered across a large area of space. He needed to have faster-than-light travel between those worlds, but that also created the problem of avoiding causality violations, one of the many limitations of the singularity for space opera that he credits Vernor Vinge, who wrote an important early essay on the concept, for having highlighted in his novel A Fire Upon the Deep. The Eschaton's dispersal of humanity and subsequent edict were his solution.

"I'd been reading too much David Weber at the time," he recalled in 2013, "and noting the uncritical enthusiasm with which readers seemed to receive his tales of Napoleonic Navies in Spaaaaace." He began to wonder why such space navies always found themselves equally matched in battle. "Surely in a diverse space operatic universe you'll occasionally see a Napoleonic space navy run into a nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine? Or the equivalent of wooden tall ships encountering an unarmed modern icebreaker." Further, he observed, "[l]et's just say that the political systems in most military space opera really suck."

To satirise these failings of the subgenre, he chose "the most barkingly insane naval expedition of recent history" as a model: the Russian Baltic Fleet's 18000 mi journey around Africa and Asia in an attempt to retake Port Arthur in China during the Russo–Japanese War in 1905, with sailors who were largely new recruits and mostly new ships on their shakedown cruise. Most of the Russian fleet of coal-fuelled ships was lost in the resulting Battle of Tsushima, a decisive victory for the Japanese. Their journey to such a crushing defeat, including an early mistaken attack on another polity's civilian vessels similar to the Dogger Bank incident, is closely paralleled by the journey of the New Republic fleet during the novel.

Once he had written that narrative, he realised he had forgotten to give the space navy an enemy. He broached this problem in a conversation at a pub in Edinburgh, where he lives, in August 1997. He recalled his original thoughts about Iain Banks's Excession, and asked for "a threat they don't understand, one that they can't understand." A friend suggested the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which was the reason they had strayed from their preferred pubs to one in Leith: "Edinburgh in August is a city on the receiving end of an alien invasion spearheaded by unicycling mimes and bagpiping elephants. Add the fleeting twilight nights (we get maybe 4 hours of complete full dark at that time of year) and the pervasive random weirdness—you can go shopping dressed as a Dalek or a 17th-century French aristocrat and nobody will blink at you—and it seemed like the perfect metaphor for what the New Republican Navy was going up against."

With that element in place, Stross cut a large chunk of what he had already written and wrote the novel's opening sequence. Since he had just gotten his own first cellphone, he decided that the Festival would announce its presence to the inhabitants of Rochard's World by raining them from orbit.

He finished the first draft, originally titled Festival of Fools, by 1998, while he was working for DataCash as a software developer and writing the Linux column for Computer Shopper. It ultimately went through three drafts, during which the author says he cut passages equal to about 140% of the finished novel.

After finishing it and the first drafts of a sequel that became Iron Sunrise, Stross was unable to sell it and nearly gave up on writing fiction. He continued trying, especially after leaving his job at DataCash, and finally sold it to Ace Books in 2001. The title was changed to avoid confusion with Richard Paul Russo's Ship of Fools, released around the same time. Stross's editor suggested working "singularity" then a buzzword, into the title.

Publication
Publication was originally scheduled for mid-2002, but was later postponed until the beginning of the next year under the Big Engine imprint. In the meantime The Atrocity Archive, two long stories Stross had published in the Scottish magazine Spectrum SF, became his first published longform fiction. Big Engine went into liquidation before it could bring out Singularity Sky. Ace published it in the US later that summer, with the mass-market paperback edition coming out a year later, making Singularity Sky Stross's first novel to be published in book form.

Orbit Books acquired the UK rights and published the hardback in 2004 and the paperback early in 2005. Since Iron Sunrise, the sequel, was published within months, an omnibus volume containing both books, Timelike Diplomacy, was published by the SF Book Club in 2004 as well. It has been translated into several other languages, published in ebook format, and remains in print. In 2012 Stross said that the royalties from it amount to $1,000 a year.

Reception
Stross's short stories, particularly those published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazines, later published as Accelerando, had created a great deal of excitement in the science-fiction community. Popular Science ran a feature focusing on him and frequent collaborator Cory Doctorow as newer writers in the genre whose shared background in computer science helped lend credibility to their stories of artificial intelligence and the use of the singularity as a story element. Dealing extensively with both those issues, his first real novel was eagerly anticipated.

It was generally well received. At SF Site Alma Hromic called it "deeply complex in a sort of cerebrally witty way". Reading it was "watching a writer having fun".

At SF Reviews, Thomas Wagner called attention to some of the novel's imperfections. While he praised the scenes showing the effect of the singularity on Rochard's World as "a tour de force of imagination", he felt the characterisation could have been better for the minor characters. Rachel and Martin "get all of Stross's attention ... Other characters are drawn out only as far as the story needs them". "As a newcomer to long fiction," wrote Publishers Weekly, "Stross has some problems with pacing, but the book still generates plenty of excitement."

It was eventually shortlisted for the Hugo Award that year. In 2010 Stross admitted the novel had some faults, calling it "quirky but not well-plotted".

Analysis and commentary
Singularity Sky has been the subject of some higher-level literary criticism. Veronica Hollinger of Trent University sees it as an example of what has been called New Baroque Space Opera, along with Iain Banks' Consider Phlebas and Alastair Reynolds' Redemption Ark. "[They] are contributing to a self-conscious revival, in new directions, of one of SF's oldest (and most denigrated) subgenres, constructing futures that—quite cheerfully, for the most part—reflect back to us the incredible complexity of the technoscientific present."

Markus Öhman, an undergraduate education student at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, has looked at how the novel deals with class and gender issues as they intersect the singularity. Rigid class distinctions, reinforced by a hereditary aristocracy, are a feature of life in the New Republic so marked that both Martin and Rachel express discontent and frustration with them. But outside that order class exists as well. Status among the revolutionaries is measured by one's understanding of, and level of commitment to, revolutionary ideology. And the Critics, in turn, have a hierarchy distinguished by knowledge—Sister Stratagems privately hopes that her oblique manner of speaking and commenting will give enough of an impression of knowledge as to allow her to become queen one day —and gender as well (the only male Critic we see is apparently relegated to a military role and rudely dismissed when he offers even a slight sentence of comment).

The Critics' class-and-gender hierarchy is mirrored by the New Republic, which oppresses women so thoroughly, Öhman observes, that only one female of that society has even a brief real speaking role in the book,(and she is an atypical one at that—the revolutionary confronting Mr. Rabbit). The singularity changes all that, although how is not shown in the text. "Through extrapolation and inference, however, it is made clear that the social upheaval results in changes in the paradigm, ensuing greater freedom for women." So, too, with social class: "... [F]or the duration of the Festival's orbital presence, Rochard's World is a classless anarchistic non-society with small zones of stability filled with modified humans."

Öhman criticises Stross for one aspect of this liberation. He notes that the fugitive Duke describes, among the effects of the singularity, women in villages made so wise that their wisdom "leaked out into the neighborhood, animating the objects around them"—suggestive of witchcraft, which has historically been used to taint women acquiring knowledge as objects to be feared and persecuted. The only significant female character on Rochard's World, Sister Stratagems, is also one of the wisest characters in the story, even if she often speaks too obliquely for her wisdom to have any direct effect. But, Öhman points out, she too is associated with witchcraft in the form of her chosen vehicle, Baba Yaga's walking hut. "Stross uses the symbol of Baba Yaga to imbue Sister Seventh with authority and power, but at the same time he paints her as a symbol of evil and fear."

By contrast, Rachel, according to Öhman, transcends gender limitations. She is both self-empowered, through her military implants and experience, and politically empowered by her position with the UN. During the staged court-martial she appears ready to become another example of a self-empowered woman who voluntarily renounces all or some of her power to save the man she loves, but instead she subverts the trope, drawing on her implants to appropriate the role of a male action hero and rescue Martin. "Through transhumanism, she transcends the tropes associated with male and female literary roles."

Sequels
The novel has a sequel, Iron Sunrise, published in 2004 and shortlisted for that year's Hugo. Stross decided afterwards that he had created unresolvable issues with the Eschaton universe and would not be writing any more works in that series. However, he has shared the plot details of a third novel he had planned, which would have dealt in part with the aftereffects of the events on Rochard's World within the New Republic as a whole.

After finishing Singularity Sky, Stross wrote the first draft of its eventual sequel. Most of it was extensively revised and even more was cut before the version that saw print. It follows Martin and Rachel, now in a long-term relationship, as they try to avert a potentially devastating revenge attack by the remnants of a colony destroyed by an induced supernova, and uncovering a more serious threat in the process. The Eschaton, as Herman, plays a larger direct role in the plot than it does in the first novel. The story is bookended by Rachel having to account to a UN accountant for the expense of her activities in Singularity Sky; otherwise there is no continuation of the narratives of that novel.

In 2010 Stross wrote that mistakes he felt he had made in Iron Sunrise had left the universe of the Eschaton novels "broken" and thus he would not be writing any more novels in the series. However, he did post on his blog the plot setup he had been considering for a third installment before he decided to abandon the setting, which would have revisited the New Republic.

His working title was Space Pirates of KPMG. It would have taken place a decade after Singularity Sky, when the destabilizing effects of the singularity on Rochard's World would have spread to the entirety of the New Republic. As a result of the economic upheavals, the remaining navy crews would be long in arrears on their pay, likely to mutiny and desert for more lucrative opportunities in piracy, using their military skills to violently rob starships of valuable cargo. This would have brought them into conflict with the predominant pirates, who prefer the more discreet technique of auditing the cargo and work with commodities traders to make money through arbitrage on the destination planet.

Legacy
Singularity Sky has been cited outside the science fiction audience by writers trying to explain to readers the title concept, or at least the effects of the rapid change the novel depicts in a real-world context. In his 2011 book News 2.0: Can Journalism Survive the Internet, Australian journalism professor Martin Hirst sees Rubenstein, whom the novel describes as a journalist, as an analogue to the position of real journalists confronted by the evolution of the Internet and social media in the early 21st century. While he concedes that there are experts who are sceptical that computers will reach or surpass human intelligence by the 2030s, "the point here is that Stross is right enough ... The world appears to be on a path of technological change that is constant and speeding up."

In 2010 David Betz, a senior lecturer in war studies at King's College, London, cited Singularity Sky as a model for a proposal to undermine the Taliban's hold over Afghanistan, and strengthen the country's legitimate government, by giving every resident of the country a free mobile phone. He said it would "create a real communications space and 'let ideas find their own levels'". In Stross's novel, he noted, "the contact of the lesser developed culture with the advanced one is utterly devastating for the status quo of the former. The parallels are pretty obvious."

title: Singularity Sky


text:
Titles of Nobility Amendment

The Titles of Nobility Amendment is a proposed and still-pending amendment to the United States Constitution. The 11th Congress passed it on May 1, 1810, and submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. It would strip United States citizenship from any citizen who accepted a title of nobility from an "emperor, king, prince or foreign power". On two occasions between 1812 and 1816, it was within two states of the number needed to become part of the Constitution. Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, so the amendment is still pending before the states.

Text from Amendment
"If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain, any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."

Background
This proposed amendment would amplify both Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, which prohibits the federal government from issuing titles of nobility or honor, and Section 10, Clause 1, which prohibits the states from issuing them.

One theory for why the Congress proposed the amendment is that it was in response to the 1803 marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother, Jerome, and Betsy Patterson of Baltimore, Maryland, who gave birth to a boy for whom she wanted aristocratic recognition from France. The child, named Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte, was not born in the United States, but in the United Kingdom on July 7, 1805 – nevertheless, he would have held U.S. citizenship through his mother. Another theory is that his mother actually desired a title of nobility for herself and, indeed, she is referred to as the "Duchess of Baltimore" in many texts written about the amendment (not to be confused with Baron Baltimore, a British-Irish title with the city of Baltimore named after the 2nd baron). The marriage had been annulled in 1805 – well before the amendment's proposal by the 11th Congress. Nonetheless, Representative Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina is recorded to have said, when voting on the amendment, that "he considered the vote on this question as deciding whether or not we were to have members of the Legion of Honor in this country." The purpose of this Amendment was to prevent those holding foreign titles, and thus the allegiance demanded by those titles, from being able to run for an office of government in the newly created Republic. This was out of fear that the foreign powers bestowing those titles would use them as markers to call in favors to either pass or impede the passing of unfavorable laws.

Legislative and ratification history
The Titles of Nobility Amendment was introduced in the Senate by Democratic–Republican Senator Philip Reed of Maryland, was passed on April 27, 1810, by a vote of 19–5 and sent to the House of Representatives for its consideration. It was passed by the House on May 1, 1810, by a vote of 87–3. Having been approved by Congress, the proposed amendment was sent to the state legislatures for ratification and was ratified by the following states: The amendment was rejected by Virginia (February 14, 1811), New York (March 12, 1812), Connecticut (May 13, 1813), and Rhode Island (September 15, 1814). No other state legislature has completed ratification action on it.
 * 1) Maryland – December 25, 1810
 * 2) Kentucky – January 31, 1811
 * 3) Ohio – January 31, 1811
 * 4) Delaware – February 2, 1811
 * 5) Pennsylvania – February 6, 1811
 * 6) New Jersey – February 13, 1811
 * 7) Vermont – October 24, 1811
 * 8) Tennessee – November 21, 1811
 * 9) North Carolina – December 23, 1811
 * 10) Georgia – December 31, 1811
 * 11) Massachusetts – February 27, 1812
 * 12) New Hampshire – December 9, 1812

When the proposed amendment was submitted to the states, ratification by 13 states was required for it to become part of the Constitution; 11 had done so by early 1812.

On February 27, 1818, President James Monroe communicated to Congress the record shown above. He and Congress were both satisfied that the required number of ratifications had not been reached. A law, passed April 20, 1818, placed official responsibility for overseeing the amendment process into the hands of the Secretary of State, where it remained until 1950.

Misconceptions
Some people (known as "Thirteenthers") have claimed that the Titles of Nobility Amendment actually became part of the Constitution. It in fact was mistakenly included as the "Thirteenth Amendment" in some early 19th century printings of the Constitution. Between 1819 and 1867 the statutory law code of Virginia included it as well. This misconception has become significant because it is yoked with another misconception – that a lawyer's use of the word or abbreviation of "Esquire" is a title of nobility acquired from a foreign power – and so some litigants and others have tried to assert that lawyers have lost their citizenship or are disqualified from public office.

The error arose in 1815 when the Philadelphia printing house of Bioren and Duane published, under a government contract, a five-volume set titled Laws of the United States. On page 74 of the first volume, the proposed amendment was printed as "Article 13" along with the authentic Eleventh and Twelfth amendments. There was no indication on the page that Article 13 had not yet passed into law, however earlier in the volume, on page ix of the Introduction, the editors said:

"There has been some difficulty in ascertaining whether the amendment proposed, which is stated as the thirteenth, has or has not been adopted by a sufficient number of the state legislatures. ... It has been considered best, however, to publish the proposed amendment in its proper place, as if it had been adopted, with this explanation, to prevent misconception."

It appears that the Bioren and Duane set of federal laws being widely distributed as a standard reference, some compilers of other books copied its text of the Constitution and not remembering, or having skipped, the caveat in the Introduction, mistakenly included the Titles of Nobility Amendment as if it had been adopted as the Thirteenth Amendment. This error came to the attention of the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1817. At that time, the publisher of a pocket edition of the Constitution, printed under government contract, included the amendment as the Thirteenth Amendment, at which time the House requested that the President ascertain and report on the true status of the proposed amendment. Notwithstanding the official conclusion that the amendment had not been adopted, the erroneous printing of the proposed amendment as if adopted occasionally occurred (using the Americanized spelling and punctuation of Bioren and Duane, and omitting any ratification information just like Bioren and Duane) until some time after 1845. In 1845, the Bioren and Duane series of laws was replaced by an entirely new series, United States Statutes at Large, which printed the Constitution with only 12 amendments in volume 1 and put the unadopted Titles of Nobility Amendment among congressional resolutions in volume 2.

In 1833, Associate Justice Joseph Story of the U.S. Supreme Court published the text of the Constitution in his Commentaries on the Constitution. That publication included twelve amendments and a clear statement (in § 959) that there were only twelve amendments adopted. The text also included a statement (in § 1346) that the Titles of Nobility Amendment had not been adopted "probably from a growing sense that it is wholly unnecessary". In 1847, Associate Justice Levi Woodbury mentioned in a dissenting opinion that there "were only twelve amendments ever made to" the Constitution. In Dillon v. Gloss (1921), the Supreme Court explicitly described the Titles of Nobility Amendment as not having been adopted. In Coleman v. Miller (1939), the two dissenting Justices similarly described the Titles of Nobility Amendment as unadopted. In Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), the majority and dissenting opinions described it as unadopted.

On March 2, 1861, the Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment, which if adopted would have prevented any federal legislation, including a future proposed amendment to the Constitution, that would have interfered with or abolished slavery. It is significant that, although this proposal was already titled as the Thirteenth Amendment, no one claimed that there already was an adopted Thirteenth Amendment.

On February 1, 1865, the 38th Congress passed and sent to the states for ratification a proposed amendment that would become the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. As with the Corwin Amendment, when what is now the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed and adopted, no one claimed that there already was an adopted Thirteenth Amendment.

The assertion that the Titles of Nobility Amendment has been ratified by the required number of states has never been upheld by any court in the United States. In the few instances in which courts have been confronted with the assertion that it was, those claims have been dismissed. In Campion v. Towns, a tax protester raised it in his defenses against a charge of tax evasion. The court replied that it would "correct any misunderstanding Plaintiff has concerning the text of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution":

"In his Complaint, Plaintiff includes a certified copy of the Thirteenth Amendment from the Colorado State Archives which was published in 1861. As included in that compilation, the Thirteenth Amendment would strip an individual of United States citizenship if they accept any title of nobility or honor. However, this is not the Thirteenth Amendment. The correct Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery. Although some people claim that state publication of the erroneous Thirteenth Amendment makes it valid, Article V of the Constitution does not so provide."

In a 2004 case, Sibley v. Culliver, a federal district court found that the defendant's invocation of this amendment worked to his detriment. The court took note of documents produced by the defendant, a convicted murderer who submitted documents in support of his appeal claiming that it rendered his conviction invalid:"These documents allege in great detail a complex conspiracy by an illegal monopoly, the American Bar Association, which resulted in a take-over of the judicial systems of this country, both federal and state, by the ABA and its related entities, including the Alabama State Bar Association and Alabama's Unified Court System. It is then alleged that the ABA-controlled system is illegal and in violation of what is referred to as the "missing Thirteenth Amendment", to the United States Constitution, which stated that any person who accepts a title of nobility forfeits his United States citizenship and which amendment was ratified but subsequently hidden or excised from the law. Since lawyers and judges accept the titles "Esquire"/"The Honorable", it is argued, they are not citizens and the entire judicial system is illegal. Furthermore, these documents contend that the charge of conviction in this case, capital murder of a police officer acting in the line of duty, is unconstitutional because it bestows upon police officers special rights or a special designation of the worth of life in contravention of the "missing Thirteenth Amendment". The documents then explain that these are reasons that Sibley and his wife refused appointed counsel on appeal and refused to pursue matters any further in the court system and that only Congress can give them relief." The Sibley court dismissed the appeal, concluding in part that the defendant was simply not seeking relief through the courts.

Sibley v. Culliver was cited by a court in describing a prison inmate's attempt to use the Titles of Nobility Amendment to claim immunity from jurisdiction:"Some plaintiffs have relied on what they have called the "true" Thirteenth Amendment to argue that various individuals are not citizens. This version of the Thirteenth Amendment allegedly states that individuals who accept titles of nobility must renounce their United States citizenship. ... The Court interprets Belt's claim of a noble title and another nationality as further indications of his attempt to renounce his citizenship and therefore contest the Government's ability to keep him imprisoned."

In a 2001 decision by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, the court rejected a defendant's attempt to use the Titles of Nobility Amendment to deny the trial court's authority to put him on trial:"[The Defendant] also appears to argue that licensing lawyers violates the original Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by equating licensure with accepting a title of nobility or honor. The current Thirteenth Amendment does not resemble the one Casteel cites, nor is he correct that a lawyer's license to practice is granted by a foreign power."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Titles of Nobility Amendment


text:
Matt Stone

Matthew Richard Stone (born May 26, 1971) is an American actor, animator, writer, producer, and musician. He is best known for co-creating South Park (since 1997) and The Book of Mormon (2011) with his creative partner Trey Parker. Intrigued by a career in entertainment at a young age, he studied film and mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he met Parker. During their attendance, the two worked on various short films and starred in the feature-length musical Cannibal! The Musical (1993).

Stone and Parker moved to Los Angeles and wrote their second film, Orgazmo (1997). Before its premiere, South Park aired on Comedy Central in August 1997 and was met with widespread praise. Following its success, the two directed a film based on the series, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), which was met with positive critical reception. Outside of South Park, Stone has written, produced, and starred in the satirical action film Team America: World Police (2004), as well as the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon (2011), which, after long-tenured delays and years of development, was met with positive reviews.

Stone is the recipient of numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on South Park, as well as three Tony Awards and one Grammy Award for The Book of Mormon.

Early life
Stone was born in Houston, Texas, to economics professor Gerald Whitney Stone and Sheila Lois (Belasco). He is of Irish-American heritage from his father's side and Jewish heritage from his mother's side. The South Park characters Gerald and Sheila Broflovski were named after them. Stone and his younger sister Rachel were raised in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, where they attended Heritage High School. He attended the University of Colorado Boulder. His father was worried he would "become a musician and a bum", so he insisted that his son major in something "practical". They compromised on Matt's majoring in both mathematics and film. Stone graduated with a double-major Bachelor of Arts degree in 1993.

Cannibal! The Musical (1992–1994)
In 1992, Stone, Parker and Ian Hardin founded a production company named the Avenging Conscience. The company was named after the D. W. Griffith film by the same title (which was actively disliked by the group.) Parker employed the cutout paper technique on Avenging Conscience's first production, Jesus vs. Frosty (1992), an animated short pitting the religious figure against Frosty the Snowman.

The quartet created a three-minute trailer for a fictional film titled Alferd Packer: The Musical. The idea was based on an obsession Parker had with Alferd Packer, a real nineteenth-century prospector accused of cannibalism. During this time, Parker had become engaged to long-time girlfriend Liane Adamo, but their relationship fell apart shortly before production on the trailer began. "Horribly depressed", Parker funneled his frustrations with her into the project, naming Packer's "beloved but disloyal" horse after her. The trailer became something of a sensation among students at the school, leading Virgil Grillo, the chairman and founder of the university's film department, to convince the quartet to expand it to a feature-length film. Parker wrote the film's script, creating an Oklahoma!-style musical featuring ten original show tunes. The group raised $125,000 from family and friends and began shooting the film. The movie was shot on Loveland Pass as winter was ending, and the crew endured the freezing weather. Parker – under the pseudonym Juan Schwartz – was the film's star, director and co-producer.

Alferd Packer: The Musical premiered in Boulder in October 1993; "they rented a limousine that circled to ferry every member of the cast and crew from the back side of the block to the red carpet at the theater's entrance." The group submitted the movie to the Sundance Film Festival, who did not respond. Parker said he had a "vision" they needed to be at the festival, which resulted in the group renting out a conference room in a nearby hotel and putting on their own screenings. MTV did a short news segment on The Big Picture regarding the film, and they made industry connections through the festival. They intended to sell video rights to the film for $1 million and spend the remaining $900,000 to create another film. The film was instead sold to Troma Entertainment in 1996 where it was retitled ''Cannibal! The Musical'', and upon the duo's later success, it became their biggest-selling title. It has since been labeled a "cult classic" and adapted into a stage play by community theater groups and even high schools nationwide.

The Spirit of Christmas and Orgazmo (1995–1997)
Following the film's success, the group, without Hardin, moved to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, they met a lawyer for the William Morris Agency who connected them with producer Scott Rudin. As a result, the duo acquired a lawyer, an agent, and a script deal. Despite initially believing themselves to be on the verge of success, the duo struggled for several years. Stone slept on dirty laundry for upwards of a year because he could not afford to purchase a mattress. They unsuccessfully pitched a children's program titled Time Warped to Fox Kids, which would have involved fictionalized stories of people in history. The trio created two separate pilots, spaced a year apart, and despite the approval of Fox Broadcasting Company development executive Pam Brady, the network disbanded the Fox Kids division.

David Zucker, who was a fan of Cannibal!, contacted the duo to produce a 15-minute short film for Seagram to show at a party for its acquisition of Universal Studios. Due to a misunderstanding, Parker and Stone improvised much of the film an hour before it was shot, creating it as a spoof of 1950s instructional videos. The result, Your Studio and You, features numerous celebrities, including Sylvester Stallone, Demi Moore, and Steven Spielberg. "You could probably make a feature film out of the experience of making that movie because it was just two dudes from college suddenly directing Steven Spielberg", Parker later remarked, noting that the experience was difficult for the two.

During the time between shooting the pilots for Time Warped, Parker penned the script for a film titled Orgazmo, which later entered production. Half of the budget for the picture came from a Japanese porn company called Kuki, who wanted to feature its performers in mainstream Western media. Independent distributor October Films purchased the rights to the film for one million dollars after its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film received an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, which resulted in the poor box office performance of the film. Parker and Stone attempted to negotiate with the organization on what to delete from the final print, but the MPAA would not give specific notes. The duo later theorized that the organization cared less because it was an independent distributor which would bring it significantly less money.

Fox executive Brian Graden cut Parker and Stone a personal check of a few thousand dollars to produce a video greeting card he could deliver to friends; the film would be a sequel to their earlier short Jesus vs. Frosty. Graden sent the film on a VHS to several industry executives in Hollywood; meanwhile, someone digitized the clip and put it up on the Internet, where it became one of the first viral videos. Due to the popularity of Jesus vs. Santa, Parker and Stone wanted to turn the short into a television series later entitled South Park, and offered the show to Fox. While Fox executives were enthusiastic about the premise, they didn't want to air a show that included the talking poo character Mr. Hankey and passed on it after the duo refused to remove the character several times. Parker and Stone then entered negotiations with both MTV and Comedy Central. Parker preferred the show be produced by Comedy Central, fearing that MTV would turn it into a kids' show. When Comedy Central executive Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned the development of the show into a series.

Premiere and initial success (1997–1998)
The pilot episode of South Park was made on a budget of $300,000, and took between three and three and a half months to complete, and animation took place in a small room at Celluloid Studios, in Denver, Colorado, during the summer of 1996. Similar to Parker and Stone's Christmas shorts, the original pilot was animated entirely with traditional cut paper stop motion animation techniques. The idea for the town of South Park came from the real Colorado basin of the same name where, according to the creators, a lot of folklore and news reports originated about "cattle mutilations and UFO and bigfoot sightings."

South Park premiered in August 1997 and immediately became one of the most popular shows on cable television, averaging consistently between 3.5 and 5.5 million viewers. The show transformed the then-fledgling Comedy Central into "a cable industry power almost overnight". At the time, the cable network had a low distribution of just 21 million subscribers. Comedy Central marketed the show aggressively before its launch, billing it as "why they created the V-chip." The resulting buzz led to the network earning an estimated $30 million in T-shirts sales alone before the first episode was even aired. Due to the success of the series' first six episodes, Comedy Central requested an additional seven; the series completed its first season in February 1998. An affiliate of the MTV Network until then, Comedy Central decided, in part due to the success of South Park, to have its own independent sales department. By the end of 1998, Comedy Central had sold more than $150 million worth of merchandise for the show, including T-shirts and dolls. Over the next few years, Comedy Central's viewership spiked largely due to South Park, adding 3 million new subscribers in the first half of 1998 alone and allowed the network to sign international deals with networks in several countries.

Parker and Stone became celebrities as a result of the program's success; Parker noted that the success of South Park allowed him to pursue, for a time, a lifestyle that involved partying with women and "out-of-control binges" in Las Vegas. Their philosophy of taking every deal (which had surfaced as a result of their lack of trust in the early success of South Park) led to their appearances in films, albums, and outside script deals. Among these included BASEketball, a 1998 comedy film that became a critical and commercial flop.

Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and continued success (1999–present)
Parker and Stone signed a deal with Comedy Central in April 1998 that contracted the duo to producing South Park episodes until 1999, gave them a slice of the lucrative spinoff merchandising the show generated within its first year, as well as an unspecified seven-figure cash bonus to bring the show to the big screen, in theaters. During the time, the team was also busy writing the second and third seasons of the series, the former of which Parker and Stone later described as "disastrous". As such, they figured the phenomenon would be over soon, and they decided to write a personal, fully committed musical. Parker and Stone fought with the MPAA to keep the film R-rated; for months the ratings board insisted on the more prohibitive NC-17. The film was only certified an R rating two weeks prior to its release, following contentious conversations between Parker/Stone, Rudin, and Paramount Pictures. Parker felt very overwhelmed and overworked during the production process of the film, especially between April and the movie's opening in late June. He admitted that press coverage, which proclaimed the end of South Park was near, bothered him. The film opened in cinemas in June 1999 and received critical acclaim while grossing $83 million at the box office.

Parker and Stone continue to write, direct, and voice most characters on South Park. Over time, the show has adopted a unique production process, in which an entire episode is written, animated and broadcast in one week. Parker and Stone state that subjecting themselves to a one-week deadline creates more spontaneity amongst themselves in the creative process, which they feel results in a funnier show. Although initial reviews for the show were negative in reference to its crass humor, the series has received numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, one Peabody Award, and numerous inclusions in various publications' lists of greatest television shows. As of 2011 its viewership was lower than at the height of its popularity in its earliest seasons, but South Park remained one of the highest-rated series on Comedy Central. In 2012, South Park cut back from producing 14 episodes per year (seven in the spring and seven in the fall) to a single run of 10 episodes in the fall, to allow the duo to explore other projects the rest of the year. The show is currently renewed through 2022, when it will reach its twenty-sixth season.

South Park has expanded to music and video games. Comedy Central released various albums, including Chef Aid: The South Park Album and Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics, in the late 1990s. The song "Chocolate Salty Balls" (as sung by the character Chef) was released as a single in the UK in 1998 to support the Chef Aid: The South Park Album and became a number one hit. Parker and Stone had little to do with the development of video games based on the series that were released at this time, but took full creative control of South Park: The Stick of Truth, a 2014 video game based on the series that received positive reviews and for which they won the 2014 Writing in a Comedy award and Stone (as Various) was nominated for Performance in a Comedy, Supporting by National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR). Broadcast syndication rights to South Park were sold in 2003, and all episodes are available for free full-length on-demand legal streaming on the official South Park Studios website. In 2007, the duo, with the help of their lawyer, Kevin Morris, cut a 50–50 joint venture with Comedy Central on all revenue not related to television; this includes digital rights to South Park, as well as movies, soundtracks, T-shirts and other merchandise, in a deal worth $75 million.

That's My Bush! (2000–2001)
In 2000, Parker and Stone began plotting a television sitcom starring the winner of the 2000 Presidential election. The duo were "95 percent sure" that Democratic candidate Al Gore would win, and tentatively titled the show Everybody Loves Al (a play on the show Everybody Loves Raymond). The main goal was to parody sitcom tropes, such as a lovable main character, the sassy maid, and the wacky neighbor, in the context of the White House household. Parker said the producers did not want to make fun of politics, but instead lampoon sitcoms. They threw a party the night of the election with the writers, with intentions to begin writing the following Monday and shooting the show in January 2001 with the inauguration. With the confusion of whom the President would be, the show's production was pushed back. The show was filmed at Sony Pictures Studios, and was the first time Parker and Stone shot a show on a production lot.

Although That's My Bush!, which ran between April–May 2001, received a fair amount of publicity and critical notice, according to Stone and Parker, the cost per episode was too high at "about $1 million an episode". Comedy Central officially cancelled the series in August 2001 as a cost-cutting move; Stone was quoted as saying "A super-expensive show on a small cable network ... the economics of it were just not going to work." Comedy Central continued the show in reruns, considering it a creative and critical success. Parker believed the show would not have survived after the September 11 attacks anyway, and Stone agreed, saying the show would not "play well". During this time, the duo also signed a deal with Shockwave.com to produce 39 animated online shorts, in which they would retain full artistic control; the result, Princess, was rejected after only two episodes.

Team America (2002–2004)
In 2002, the duo began working on Team America: World Police, a satire of big-budget action films and their associated clichés and stereotypes, with particular humorous emphasis on the global implications of the politics of the United States. Team America was produced using a crew of about 200 people; sometimes four people at a time were needed to manipulate a marionette. Although the filmmakers hired three dozen highly skilled marionette operators, execution of some very simple acts by the marionettes proved to be very difficult, with a simple shot such as a character drinking taking a half-day to complete successfully. The deadline for the film's completion took a toll on both filmmakers, as did various difficulties in working with puppets, with Stone, who described the film as "the worst time of [his] life", resorting to coffee to work 20-hour days and sleeping pills to enable him to rest. The film was barely completed in time for its October release date, but reviews were positive and the film made a modest sum at the box office.

The Book of Mormon (2011–present)
Parker and Stone, alongside writer-composer Robert Lopez, began working on a musical centering on Mormonism during the production of Team America. Lopez, a fan of South Park and creator of the puppet musical Avenue Q, met with the duo after a performance of the musical, where they conceived the idea. The musical, titled The Book of Mormon: The Musical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was worked on over a period of various years; working around their South Park schedule, they flew between New York City and Los Angeles often, first writing songs for the musical in 2006. Developmental workshops began in 2008, and the crew embarked on the first of a half-dozen workshops that would take place during the next four years. Originally, producer Scott Rudin planned to stage The Book of Mormon off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop in summer 2010, but opted to premiere it directly on Broadway, "[s]ince the guys [Parker and Stone] work best when the stakes are highest." After a frantic series of rewrites, rehearsals, and previews, The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on March 24, 2011. The Book of Mormon received broad critical praise for the plot, score, actors' performances, direction and choreography. A cast recording of the original Broadway production became the highest-charting Broadway cast album in over four decades. The musical received nine Tony Awards, one for Best Musical, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. The production has since expanded to two national tours, a Chicago production, and a UK production, and Parker and Stone have confirmed a film adaption is in pre-production.

Future projects (2013–present)
On January 14, 2013, Stone and Parker announced that they would be starting a film production company called Important Studios. Inspired by the production work of Lucasfilm and DreamWorks, Stone and Parker considered founding the studio for approximately two years before committing. The initial financial assets of the studio are valued at $300 million, with the majority of the money originating from South Park, The Book of Mormon, while $60 million is from an investment from Joseph Ravitch of The Raine Group, giving him a 20 percent minority stock.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parker, Stone, and Peter Serafinowicz created a web series, Sassy Justice. The series uses deepfake technology to insert unrelated celebrities and politicians into the fictional world of a television reporter. The first episode was posted to YouTube on October26, 2020. The team was originally assembled for a film project that was interrupted due to the pandemic, who made the video based on a series of impressions that Serafinowicz developed of a "sassy" Donald Trump. The creators have a handful of shorter videos alongside a 15-minute first episode that may be turned into an ongoing series, film, or other type of project.

In August 2021, Stone and Parker signed a $900 million deal with Paramount Global to make six additional seasons of South Park and 14 movies in the South Park universe for streaming. In September 2021, Stone and Parker reached an agreement to purchase Casa Bonita for $3.1 million. A group named "Save Casa Bonita" filed an objection to Parker and Stone's purchase, pointing out that they had in fact made an offer first. Their objection was later withdrawn, and the sale was completed by November 19. They spent $40 million renovating the restaurant and hired Chef Dana Rodriguez to update the menu. The restaurant had a soft opening on May 26, 2023. In early June, Casa Bonita began taking reservations although a formal opening date had not been set. Stone and Parker amended the employee compensation system at Casa Bonita, removing the need for wait staff to earn tips, instead paying every employee $30 per hour, much higher than the Colorado minimum wage, $13.65.

In January 2022, it was announced Parker will produce an untitled film with Stone through their now-renamed production company Park County and Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free's multi-disciplinary media company PGLang. In March 2023, it was reported that Parker will direct the film. It will be distributed by Paramount Pictures. The live-action comedy film, written by Vernon Chatman, addresses racial issues. Production was expected to begin in the spring of 2023.

Personal life
Stone met Comedy Central executive Angela Howard in 2001, and they began a relationship shortly after. They got married in 2008 and have two children together. Stone and his family live in Venice, Los Angeles.

Stone has described himself as ethnically Jewish due to his mother being Jewish. He is an atheist.

Stone said in 2001, regarding his political views, "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals." When asked about that quote during a 2010 interview, Stone stated: "We don't want you to come to it thinking, 'These guys are going to bash liberals,' … It’s so much more fun for us to rip on liberals only because nobody else does it, and not because we think liberals are worse than Republicans." In 2006, Stone described himself as libertarian.

Filmography and accolades

 * Cannibal! The Musical (1993)
 * Orgazmo (1997)
 * BASEketball (1998)
 * South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
 * Terror Firmer (1999)
 * Bowling for Columbine (2002)
 * Run Ronnie Run (2002)
 * Team America: World Police (2004)
 * The Aristocrats (2005)
 * This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)
 * Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo (2007)
 * Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage (2010)

title: Matt Stone


text:
Trey Parker

Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III (born October 19, 1969) is an American actor, animator, writer, producer, director, and musician. He is best known for co-creating South Park (since 1997) and The Book of Mormon (2011) with his creative partner Matt Stone. Parker was interested in film and music as a child and at high school and attended the University of Colorado Boulder, where he met Stone. The two collaborated on various short films and co-starred in Parker’s feature-length musical Cannibal! The Musical (1993).

Parker and Stone moved to Los Angeles, and Parker made his second feature-length film Orgazmo (1997). Before the premiere of the film, South Park premiered on Comedy Central in August 1997. The duo possess full creative control of the show, and have produced music and video games based on it. A film based on the series, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), was well-received from both critics and fans. Parker went on to write, produce, direct, and star in the satirical action film Team America: World Police (2004), and, after several years of development, The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway to positive reviews.

Parker has received five Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on South Park, four Tony Awards and a Grammy Award for The Book of Mormon, and an Academy Award nomination for the song "Blame Canada" from the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut movie, co-written with Marc Shaiman.

Early life
Parker was born in Conifer, Colorado, the son of insurance saleswoman Sharon and geologist Randolph "Randy" Parker II. He was a shy child who received "decent" grades and was involved in honors classes. He idolized Monty Python, which he began watching on television in the third grade. His later ventures into animation would bear considerable influence from Terry Gilliam. In the sixth grade, Parker wrote a sketch titled The Dentist and appeared in his school's talent show. He played the dentist and had a friend play the patient. The plot involved what can go wrong at the dentist; due to the amounts of fake blood involved, Parker's parents were called and were upset, with Parker later recalling that "the kindergartners were all crying and freaking out".

Parker has described himself as "the typical big-dream kid" who envisioned a career in film and music. He made short films on the weekends with a group of friends, beginning when he was 14. His father had purchased him a video camera and the group continued making films until graduation. He became interested in pursuing music at 17, but only comedy-centered songs; he wrote and recorded a full-length comedy album, Immature: A Collection of Love Ballads For The '80's Man, with friend David Goodman during this time. As a teenager, Parker developed a love for musical theatre and joined the Evergreen Players, a venerable mountain community theater outside of Denver. At 14, he performed his first role as chorus member in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Flower Drum Song and went on to also design sets for the community theater's production of Little Shop of Horrors. In high school, he also played piano for the chorus and was president of the choir counsel. As Evergreen was nationally known for its choir program, Parker was a very popular high school student, connected to his position as the head of the choir. He was typically the lead in school plays and was also prom king. While in school, Parker had a part-time job at a Pizza Hut and was described as a film geek and music buff.

Following his graduation from Evergreen High School in 1988, Parker spent a semester at Berklee College of Music before transferring to the University of Colorado Boulder. Parker majored in both film and Japanese. During his time there, he took a film class in which students were required to collaborate on projects. In the course, he met Matt Stone—a math major from the nearby town of Littleton—and the two immediately bonded over provocative, anti-authoritarian humor and Monty Python. Parker's first film was titled Giant Beavers of Southern Sri Lanka (1989), parodying Godzilla-style rampages with beavers; fellow student Jason McHugh later remarked that the idea nearly got him laughed out of class. Parker and Stone wrote and acted in many short films together, among those First Date, Man on Mars and Job Application. Parker later remarked that he and Stone would shoot a film nearly every week, but he has since lost most of them. Parker first used a construction paper animation technique on American History (1992), a short film made for his college animation class. It became an unexpected sensation, resulting in Parker's first award—a Student Academy Award. Parker recalled sitting in the auditorium in front of students from animation schools such as CalArts, saying, "And there are all these Cal Arts kids behind me who had submitted these beautiful watercolor and pencil things. And here's my shitty construction-paper thing, which makes South Park look like Disney, by the way, and they're all fuming." He graduated with a double-major Bachelor of Arts degree in 1993.

Cannibal! The Musical (1992–1994)
In 1992, Parker, Stone, McHugh, and Ian Hardin founded a production company named the Avenging Conscience, named after the D. W. Griffith film by the same name, which all four actively disliked. Parker again employed the cutout paper technique on Avenging Conscience's first production, Jesus vs. Frosty (1992), an animated short pitting the religious figure against Frosty the Snowman.

The quartet created a three-minute trailer for a fictional film titled Alferd Packer: The Musical. The idea was based on an obsession Parker had with Alferd Packer, a real nineteenth-century prospector accused of cannibalism. During this time, Parker had become engaged to long-time girlfriend Liane Adamo, but their relationship fell apart shortly before production on the trailer had begun. "Horribly depressed", Parker funneled his frustrations with her into the project, naming Packer's "beloved but disloyal" horse after her. The trailer became somewhat of a sensation among students at the school, leading Virgil Grillo, the chairman and founder of the university's film department, to convince the quartet to expand it to a feature-length film. Parker wrote the film's script, creating an Oklahoma!-style musical featuring ten original show tunes. The group raised $125,000 from family and friends and began shooting the film. The film was shot on Loveland Pass as winter was ending, and the crew endured the freezing weather. Parker—under the pseudonym Juan Schwartz—was the film's star, director and co-producer.

Alferd Packer: The Musical premiered in Boulder in October 1993; "they rented a limousine that circled to ferry every member of the cast and crew from the back side of the block to the red carpet at the theater's entrance." The group submitted the film to the Sundance Film Festival, who did not respond. Parker told McHugh he had a "vision" they needed to be at the festival, which resulted in the group renting out a conference room in a nearby hotel and putting on their own screenings. MTV did a short news segment on The Big Picture regarding the film, and they made industry connections through the festival. They intended to sell video rights to the film for $1 million and spend the remaining $900,000 to create another film. The film was instead sold to Troma Entertainment in 1996 where it was retitled ''Cannibal! The Musical'', and upon the duo's later success, it became their biggest-selling title. It has since been labeled a "cult classic" and adapted into a stage play by community theater groups and even high schools nationwide.

The Spirit of Christmas and Orgazmo (1995–1997)
Following the film's success, the group, sans Hardin, moved to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, they met a lawyer for the William Morris Agency who connected them with producer Scott Rudin. As a result, the duo acquired a lawyer, an agent, and a script deal. Despite initially believing themselves to be on the verge of success, the duo struggled for several years. Stone slept on dirty laundry for upwards of a year because he could not afford to purchase a mattress. They unsuccessfully pitched a children's program titled Time Warped to Fox Kids, which would have involved fictionalized stories of people in history. The trio created two separate pilots, spaced a year apart, and despite the approval of Fox Broadcasting Company development executive Pam Brady, the network disbanded the Fox Kids division.

David Zucker, who was a fan of Cannibal!, contacted the duo to produce a 15-minute short film for Seagram to show at a party for its acquisition of Universal Studios. Due to a misunderstanding, Parker and Stone improvised much of the film an hour before it was shot, creating it as a spoof of 1950s instructional videos. The result, Your Studio and You, features numerous celebrities, including Sylvester Stallone, Demi Moore, and Steven Spielberg. "You could probably make a feature film out of the experience of making that movie because it was just two dudes from college suddenly directing Steven Spielberg," Parker later remarked, noting that the experience was difficult for the two.

During the time between shooting the pilots for Time Warped, Parker penned the script for a film titled Orgazmo, which later entered production. Half of the budget for the picture came from a Japanese porn company called Kuki, who wanted to feature its performers in mainstream Western media. Independent distributor October Films purchased the rights to the film for one million dollars after its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film received an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, which resulted in the poor box office performance of the film. Parker and Stone attempted to negotiate with the organization on what to delete from the final print, but the MPAA would not give specific notes. The duo later theorized that the organization cared less because it was an independent distributor which would bring it significantly less money.

Parker and Stone also made a short film called The Spirit of Christmas (although it is now usually called Jesus vs. Frosty). Brian Graden (then at Fox) liked this short and asked Parker and Stone to produce a video greeting card (for which he paid with his own money) that he could send to friends. Both Jesus vs. Frosty and Jesus vs. Santa had The Spirit of Christmas as opening credits. Graden sent the film on VHS to several industry executives in Hollywood; meanwhile, someone digitized the short film and put it on the internet, where it became one of the first viral videos. As Jesus vs. Santa became more popular, Parker and Stone began talks of developing the short into a television series called South Park. They first pitched the show to Fox, but the network refused to pick it up due to not wanting to air a show that included the talking poo character Mr. Hankey. The two were initially skeptical of possible television deals, noting that previous endeavors had not turned out to be successful, but then entered negotiations with both MTV and Comedy Central. Parker preferred the show be produced by Comedy Central, fearing that MTV would turn it into a kids' show. When Comedy Central executive Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned for it to be developed into a series.

Premiere and initial success (1997–1998)
The pilot episode of South Park was made on a budget of $300,000 and took between three and three and a half months to complete; animation took place in a small room at Celluloid Studios, in Denver, Colorado, during the summer of 1996. Similarly to Parker and Stone's Christmas shorts, the original pilot was animated entirely with traditional cut paper stop-motion animation techniques. The idea for the town of South Park came from the real Colorado basin of the same name, where, according to the creators, a lot of folklore and news reports originated about "UFO sightings, and cattle mutilations, and Bigfoot sightings."

At the time, Comedy Central had a low distribution of just 21 million subscribers. The company marketed the show aggressively before its launch, billing it as "why they created the V-chip". The resulting buzz led to the network earning an estimated $30 million in T-shirts sales alone before the first episode was even aired. South Park premiered in August 1997 and immediately became one of the most popular shows on cable television, averaging consistently between 3.5 and 5.5 million viewers. The show transformed the fledgling network into "a cable industry power almost overnight". Due to the success of the series' first six episodes, Comedy Central requested an additional seven; the series completed its first season in February 1998. An affiliate of the MTV Network until then, Comedy Central decided, in part due to the success of South Park, to have its own independent sales department. By the end of 1998, Comedy Central had sold more than $150 million worth of merchandise for the show, including T-shirts and dolls. Over the next few years, Comedy Central's viewership spiked, largely due to South Park, adding 3 million new subscribers in the first half of 1998 alone, and allowed the network to sign international deals with networks in several countries.

Parker and Stone became celebrities as a result of the program's success; Parker noted that the success of South Park allowed him to pursue, for a time, a lifestyle that involved partying with women and "out-of-control binges" in Las Vegas. Their philosophy of taking every deal (which had surfaced as a result of their lack of trust in the early success of South Park) led to their appearances in films, albums, and outside script deals. Among these were BASEketball, a 1998 comedy film that became a critical and commercial flop, and rights to produce a prequel to Dumb and Dumber, which was never completed.

Bigger, Longer & Uncut and continued success
Parker and Stone signed a deal with Comedy Central in April 1998 that contracted the duo to producing South Park episodes until 1999, gave them a slice of the lucrative spinoff merchandising the show generated within its first year, as well as an unspecified seven-figure cash bonus to bring the show to the big screen, in theaters. During the time, the team was also busy writing the second and third seasons of the series, the former of which Parker and Stone later described as "disastrous". As such, they figured the phenomenon would be over soon, and they decided to write a personal, fully committed musical. Parker and Stone fought with the MPAA to keep the film R-rated; for months the ratings board insisted on the more prohibitive NC-17. The film was only certified an R rating two weeks prior to its release, following contentious conversations between Parker/Stone, Rudin, and Paramount Pictures. Parker felt overwhelmed and overworked during the production process of the film, especially between April and the film's opening in late June. He admitted that press coverage, which proclaimed the end of South Park was near, bothered him. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut opened in cinemas in June 1999 and received critical acclaim while grossing $83 million at the box office.

Parker and Stone continue to write, direct, and voice most characters on South Park. Over time, the show has adopted a unique production process, in which an entire episode is written, animated and broadcast in one week. Parker and Stone state that subjecting themselves to a one-week deadline creates more spontaneity amongst themselves in the creative process, which they feel results in a funnier show. Although initial reviews for the show were negative in reference to its crass humor, the series has received numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and numerous inclusions in various publications' lists of greatest television shows. Though its viewership is lower than it was at the height of its popularity in its earliest seasons, South Park remains one of the highest-rated series on Comedy Central. In 2012, South Park cut back from producing 14 episodes per year (seven in the spring and seven in the fall) to a single run of 10 episodes in the fall, to allow the duo to explore other projects the rest of the year. The show's twenty-third season premiered on September 25, 2019.

South Park has continued, becoming an enterprise worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The franchise has also expanded to music and video games. Comedy Central released various albums, including Chef Aid: The South Park Album and Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics, in the late 1990s. The song "Chocolate Salty Balls" (as sung by the character Chef) was released as a single in the UK in 1998 to support the Chef Aid: The South Park Album and became a number one hit. Parker and Stone had little to do with the development of video games based on the series that were released at this time, but took full creative control of South Park: The Stick of Truth, a 2014 video game based on the series that received positive reviews and for which they shared (with Eric Fenstermaker) the 2014 Writing In A Comedy and Parker won the Performance in a Comedy, Supporting award by National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR). Broadcast syndication rights to South Park were sold in 2003, and all episodes are available for free full-length on-demand legal streaming on the official South Park Studios website. In 2007, the duo, with the help of their lawyer, Kevin Morris, cut a 50–50 joint venture with Comedy Central on all revenue not related to television; this includes digital rights to South Park, as well as films, soundtracks, T-shirts and other merchandise, in a deal worth $75 million.

In August 2021, Parker and Stone signed a $900 million deal with ViacomCBS to renew the series for six additional seasons and 14 projects on Paramount+.

That's My Bush! (2000–2001)
In 2000, Parker and Stone began plotting a television sitcom starring the winner of the 2000 presidential election. The duo were "95 percent sure" that Democratic candidate Al Gore would win, and tentatively titled the show Everybody Loves Al. Parker said the producers did not want to make fun of politics: the main goal was to parody sitcom tropes, such as a lovable main character, the sassy maid, and the wacky neighbor. They threw a party the night of the election with the writers, with intentions to begin writing the following Monday and shooting the show in January 2001 with the inauguration. With the confusion of whom the President would be, the show's production was pushed back. The show was filmed at Sony Pictures Studios, and was the first time Parker and Stone shot a show on a production lot.

Although That's My Bush!, which ran between April and May 2001, received a fair amount of publicity and critical notice, according to Stone and Parker, the cost per episode was too high, "about $1 million an episode." Comedy Central officially cancelled the series in August 2001 as a cost-cutting move; Stone was quoted as saying "A super-expensive show on a small cable network...the economics of it were just not going to work." Comedy Central continued the show in reruns, considering it a creative and critical success. Parker believed the show would not have survived after the September 11 attacks anyway, and Stone agreed, saying the show would not "play well". During this time, the duo also signed a deal with Shockwave.com to produce 39 animated online shorts, in which they would retain full artistic control; the result, Princess, was rejected after only two episodes.

Team America (2002–2004)
In 2002, the duo began working on Team America: World Police, a satire of big-budget action films and their associated clichés and stereotypes, with particular humorous emphasis on the global implications of the politics of the United States. The film was inspired by the 1960s British marionette series, Thunderbirds.

Starring puppets, Team America was produced using a crew of about 200 people, which sometimes required four people at a time to manipulate a marionette. Although the filmmakers hired three dozen highly skilled marionette operators, execution of some very simple acts by the marionettes proved to be very difficult, with a simple shot such as a character drinking taking a half-day to complete successfully. The deadline for the film's completion took a toll on both filmmakers, as did various difficulties in working with puppets, with Stone, who described the film as "the worst time of [my] life", resorting to coffee to work 20-hour days and sleeping pills to go to bed. The film was barely completed in time for its October release date, but reviews were positive and the film made a modest sum at the box office.

The Book of Mormon
Parker and Stone, alongside writer-composer Robert Lopez, began working on a musical centering on Mormonism during the production of Team America. Lopez, a fan of South Park and creator of the puppet musical Avenue Q, met with the duo after a performance of the musical, where they conceived the idea. The musical, titled The Book of Mormon: The Musical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was worked on over a period of several years; working around their South Park schedule, they flew between New York City and Los Angeles often, first writing songs for the musical in 2006. Developmental workshops began in 2008, and the crew embarked on the first of a half-dozen workshops that would take place during the next four years. Originally, producer Scott Rudin planned to stage The Book of Mormon off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop in summer 2010, but opted to premiere it directly on Broadway, "[s]ince the guys [Parker and Stone] work best when the stakes are highest."

After a frantic series of rewrites, rehearsals, and previews, The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on March 24, 2011. The Book of Mormon received broad critical praise for the plot, score, actors' performances, direction and choreography. A cast recording of the original Broadway production became the highest-charting Broadway cast album in over four decades. The musical received nine Tony Awards, one for Best Musical, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. The production has since expanded to two national tours, a Chicago production, UK production, and as of 2014 Parker and Stone had confirmed that a film adaption was in pre-production.

Future projects

With sufficient funds from their work on South Park and The Book of Mormon, the duo announced plans to create their own production studio, Important Studios, in January 2013. The studio will approve projects ranging from films to television to theatre.

On April 13, 2016, Universal Pictures announced Trey Parker would voice the villain Balthazar Bratt in Despicable Me 3. The film, released in June 2017, was Parker's first voice role not scripted by either him or Matt Stone.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parker, Stone, and Peter Serafinowicz created a web series, Sassy Justice. The series uses deepfake technology to insert unrelated celebrities and politicians into the fictional world of a television reporter. The first episode was posted to YouTube on October26, 2020. The team was originally assembled for a film project that was interrupted due to the pandemic, who made the video based on a series of impressions that Serafinowicz developed of a "sassy" Donald Trump. The creators have a handful of shorter videos alongside a 15-minute first episode that may be turned into an ongoing series, film, or other type of project.

In August 2021, Parker and Stone signed a $900 million deal with Paramount Global to make six additional seasons of South Park and 14 movies in the South Park universe for streaming. In September 2021, Parker and Stone reached an agreement to purchase Casa Bonita for $3.1 million. A group named "Save Casa Bonita" filed an objection to Parker and Stone's purchase, pointing out that they had in fact made an offer first. Their objection was later withdrawn, and the sale was completed by November 19. They spent $40 million renovating the restaurant and hired Chef Dana Rodriguez to update the menu. The restaurant had a soft opening on May 26, 2023. In early June, Casa Bonita began taking reservations although a formal opening date had not been set. Parker and Stone amended the employee compensation system at Casa Bonita, removing the need for wait staff to earn tips, instead paying every employee $30 per hour, much higher than the Colorado minimum wage, $13.65.

In January 2022, it was announced Parker will produce an untitled film with Stone through their now-renamed production company Park County and Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free's multi-disciplinary media company PGLang. In March 2023, it was reported that Parker will direct the film. It will be distributed by Paramount Pictures. The live-action film comedy, written by Vernon Chatman, addresses racial issues. Production is expected to begin in the spring of 2023.

Personal life
Parker married Emma Sugiyama in 2006. Their marriage was officiated by 1970s sitcom producer Norman Lear. The marriage ended in divorce in 2008.

Parker subsequently began a relationship with Boogie Tillmon, whom he later married in 2014. Parker gained a stepson through this relationship. Their daughter was born in 2013. The couple divorced in 2019, citing irreconcilable differences. While they remain divorced, they have since reconciled to co-parent their child.

Parker resides in Los Angeles, California. He owns properties in Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Kauai, Hawaii; Seattle, Washington; and Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

In a September 2006 edition of the ABC News program Nightline, Parker expressed his views on religion, stating that he believes in "a God" and that "there is knowledge that humanity does not yet possess" while cautioning that it would take a long time to explain exactly what he meant by his belief in God. Parker believes all religions are "silly". He stated: "All the religions are super funny to me... The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent His only Son. Why could God only have one son and why would He have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act." Parker further remarked, "Basically... out of all the ridiculous religion stories which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous—the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'Yeah... there's this big giant universe and it's expanding, it's all gonna collapse on itself and we're all just here just 'cause... just ' cause'. That, to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever."

A 2001 Los Angeles Times article described Parker as "not overly political" and quoted him as saying he was "a registered Libertarian". In 2004, Parker summed up his views with the comment:

"What we're sick of—and it's getting even worse—is: you either like Michael Moore or you wanna fuckin' go overseas and shoot Iraqis. There can't be a middle ground. Basically, if you think Michael Moore's full of shit, then you are a super-Christian right-wing whatever. And we're both just pretty middle-ground guys. We find just as many things to rip on on the left as we do on the right. People on the far left and the far right are the same exact person to us."

Filmography and accolades

 * Cannibal! The Musical (1993)
 * Orgazmo (1997)
 * BASEketball (1998)
 * South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
 * Terror Firmer (1999)
 * Run Ronnie Run! (2002)
 * Team America: World Police (2004)
 * The Aristocrats (2005)
 * Despicable Me 3 (2017)
 * Untitled Kendrick Lamar film (TBA)

title: Trey Parker