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Exit Transmet

Wired, December 2002

Jury Service

scifi.com (with Charlie Stross)

In spring 2002, Charlie Stross and I co-wrote a story called "Jury Service," an extremely gonzo post-Singularity story whose writing was more fun than any other story I've ever written. Charlie and I pitched the manuscript back and forth to one another in 500-1000 word chunks, each time trying to top the other. We have very little "meta" communication -- just sent the story around and rewrote what we had, then added our own bits. I can remember chuckling so loudly while considering what I would do with Charlie's latest challenge in an airport lounge that the security guard came by to ask if everything was all right.

Stross is amazingly fun to write with. We've put together another story since and will be writing some short shorts as soon as both of us can take a break from our novels for a couple weeks.

"Jury Service" was published in four pieces -- it's 21,000 words in all! -- on scifi.com, weekly through December 2002. The first chunk went live this morning. I think that this is one of the most entertaining pieces I've ever worked on, kind of Rucker-meets-Stephenson-meets-William S. Burroughs. Hope you like it.
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Truncat

Bakkanthology
Salon, August 2003

German translation by Magnus Wurzer, Schnipsel, Oct 2005
Slovakian translation (Pavol Hvizdos)

I'm not really big on sequels. For me, inventing a new world is about 80% of the fun. That said, I did write one novelette-length followup (not really a sequel) to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, this story right here, Truncat.

This is yet another one of those stories that I've written at a summer writers' retreat with old Clarion classmates and friends. This one came out of a workshop at Cynthia Zender's house in Colorado Springs, CO -- the same town where Tesla set the world's record for longest piece of man-made lightning.

It was originally published in BAKKANTHOLOGY, an anthology of stories by writers who've worked at Bakka, the Toronto-based science fiction bookstore where I once worked. It was a great little limited-edition book, but I wanted the story to have wider distribution, so I arranged with Salon to have it reprinted in August, just before the next WorldCon.
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