My latest Guardian column, “Information overload? Time to relax then,” describes a technique for overcoming “information overload” by letting go of the idea that if you overlook something in your inbox, RSS reader, or other feed that it’ll disappear forever. The faster your feeds get, the more the good stuff gets repeated — trust the redundancy and embrace non-deterministic information consumption!

This was a real struggle at first. There is a world of difference between reading every word uttered in a community and reading just a few choice ones. But soon the anxiety gave way to contentment and even delight: it turned out that “overload” has a wonderful corollary: redundancy.

Anything really worth seeing wouldn’t just appear once and vanish. The really interesting stuff would find its way into other discussions, and early conferencing systems made it easy enough to back my way through the forums I was ignoring or skimming to find the important thing I’d missed.

This pattern went on to repeat itself again and again. Once, I could read all the Usenet discussion groups my ISP carried, then only a selection, and then only one or two plus a longer list of groups I’d dip into now and again when time allowed.

Information overload? Time to relax then

(Image: Web 2.0 icons, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from zipckr’s photostream)

Thanks to Ludwik Stawowy for sending along the cover for the Polish edition of Little Brother, AKA Maly Brat!

Pamela DiFrancesco writes, “Iread your novel Little Brother, not too long ago and really loved it—except I just didn’t believe that the court system would be as just as it was, or that Marcus would be saved by the police, or that he would go on to “rock the vote,” so to speak. So (thanks to the wonder of Creative Commons), I rewrote it and posted it on my blog.”

I lost track of time. Days and nights blended together, a never-ending stream of assaults on my senses and my body. I began to lose my grip on reality. Sometimes during the torture, I made up stories. Every teacher, adult, authority figure I’d ever known had been an al Qaeda operative, bent on recruiting me. I babbled these stories to my torturers, and sometimes even believed they were true. They recorded my rantings and played them back to me at night. They became the dreams I was deprived of.

But through it all, I never gave them my password, or told them about Xnet, or sold out my friends.

One day after a torture session, I was dragged down a different hallway than usual. One of my guards, talking over me as if I wasn’t there, addressed the other guard.

This month’s Locus magazine contains the annual “Locus Recommended Reading List,” a guide to the best science fiction and fantasy published in the preceding year, chosen by the magazine’s critics.

In addition to being a great primer for exploring the year in fiction, they’re also an excellent cheat-sheet for award-nominations — for example, the Hugo Award nomination deadline is fast approaching. You can nominate for the Hugo if you attended or supported last year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, or if you have registered to attend or support this year’s WorldCon in Reno.

I’m delighted to note that two of my stories were included in this year’s Locus List: my novella Chicken Little and my short story The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening. Here’s the full list of my eligible works, in case you’re interested:

* Novel: For the Win (Tor, 2010)
* Novella: Chicken Little (Gateways, edited by Jim Frenkel, Tor, 2010)
* Novella: Epoch (published in With a Little Help, Sweet Home Grindstone press, 2010)

* Novella: There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow Now is the Best Time of Your Life (published in Godlike Machines, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Science Fiction Book Club, 2010)
* Short story: The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening, (Shareable.net, 2010)
* Short story: Ghosts in My Head (Subterranean Press, 2010)

2010 Locus Recommended Reading List