My story Truncat (a sequel to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) has been translated into German by Magnus Wurzer. The translation is called Schnipsel and it’s licensed under a Creative Commons license.

I’ve got a story in Future Washington, an anthology that just came out. As the title implies, the anthology collects stories about the future of Washington DC, and in my case, the future of regulation, too. I’ve read about half the stories in the anthology since my contributor’s copy arrived in the mail yesterday and I’ve yet to come up with a dud. Not surprising, given the contributions of writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, Joe Haldeman, Brenda Clough and many others.

My story is a novella called “Human Readable,” and of all my short fiction, it is the story I’m most proud of. It’s the tale of a world that’s been upended by hyper-efficient planning algorithms based on ant-colony optimizations, so that Los Angeles has the best traffic in the world. However, when these networks crash, they really crash — cars, surfboards, and many other common conveyances end up catastrophically failing, with concomitant loss of life.

Human Readable is the story of a couple who break up over their relation to the ant-networks. Reiner is a hacker who works on improving the networks. Trish is an activist lawyer who wants to see them regulated. Their irreconcilable differences turn them from being lovers into being political opponents.

“We, as a society, make trade-offs all the time,” Rainer said. He was wearing a different suit this evening, something that Trish had to admit looked damned good on the studio monitors (better than her frumpy blouse and wool winter-weight trousers). “We trade a little bit of privacy for a little bit of security when we show identification before going into a federal building –”

The ewok held up his paw. “But how much should we be willing to trade, Ms. McCavity?”

She looked into the camera, keeping her eyes still, the way she’d been told to if she didn’t want to appear tourettic. “Wickett, when Franklin said, ‘Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty,’ he wasn’t spouting empty rhetoric, he was laying the groundwork for this enduring democratic experiment that we all love. Look, we’re not opposed to the use of autonomous networks for *some* applications, even *most* applications, with appropriate safeguards and checks and balances. No nation on earth has the reliance that we do on these networks. Are they an appropriate way of advising you on the best way to get to the mall on a busy Saturday? Absolutely, provided that everyone gets the best advice the system can give, regardless of economic status or influence. But should they be used to figure out whom the FBI should open an investigation into? Absolutely not. We use judges and grand juries and evidence to establish the sufficiency of a request to investigate a private citizen who is considered innocent until proven guilty. We learned that lesson the hard way, during the War on Terrorism and the Ashcroft witch-hunts. Should we trade grand juries and judges for ant-colonies? Do you want the warrant for your wiretap issued by an accountable human being or by a simulated ant-hill?”

The ewok turned to the camera. “Both sides make a compelling case. What do you think? When we come back, we’ll take your calls and questions.” The lights dimmed and it adjusted its collar and cracked its hairy knuckles on the table before it. Ever since it had made the move to a pbs, it had been grooming its fur ever-more conservatively and trying out a series of waistcoats and short pants. It turned to her and stared at her with its saucer-sized black button eyes. “You know, I just wanted to say thanks — I had self-identified as an ewok since I was five years old, but Lucasfilm just wouldn’t license the surgery, so I went through every day feeling like a stranger in my body. It wasn’t until your law got enacted that I was able to find a doctor who’d do it without permission.”

Part five of Themepunks (earlier installments), my novel-in-progress, is up on Salon this morning. Themepunks is the story of a tech-boom driven by commodity hardware, three-d printers, and leftover geek talent going begging after the dotcom bust. Part five tells the story of Lester and Perry’s next invention, and of Andrea’s miserable homecoming to Northern California:

“Resource contention readily decomposes into a bunch of smaller problems, with distinctive solutions. Take dishes: every dishwasher should be designed with a ‘clean’ and a ‘dirty’ compartment — basically, two logical dishwashers. You take clean dishes out of the clean side, use them, and put them into the dirty side. When the dirty side is full, the clean side is empty, so you cycle the dishwasher and the clean side becomes dirty and vice-versa. I had some sketches for designs that would make this happen, but it didn’t feel right: making dishwashers is too industrial for us. I either like making big chunks of art or little silver things you can carry in your pocket.”

She smiled despite herself. She was drawing a half-million readers a day by doing near-to-nothing besides repeating the mind-blowing conversations around her. It had taken her a month to consider putting ads on the site — lots of feelers from blog “micro-labels” who’d wanted to get her under management and into their banner networks, and she broke down when one of them showed her a little spreadsheet detailing the kind of long green she could expect to bring in from a couple of little banners, with her getting the right to personally approve every advertiser in the network. The first month, she’d made more money than all but the most senior writers on the Merc. The next month, she’d outstripped her own old salary. She supposed it meant that she should make it official and phone in a resignation to Jimmy, but they’d left it pretty ambiguous as to whether she was retiring or taking a leave of absence and she was reluctant to collapse that waveform into the certainty of saying goodbye to her old life.

“So I got to thinking about snitch-tags, radio frequency ID gizmos. Remember those? When we started talking about them a decade ago, all the privacy people went crazy, totally sure that these things would be bad news. The geeks dismissed them as not understanding the technology. Supposedly, an RFID can only be read from a couple inches away — if someone wanted to find out what RFIDs you had on your person, they’d have to wand you, and you’d know about it.”

“Yeah, that was bull,” Perry said. “I mean, sure you can’t read an RFID unless it’s been excited with electromagnetic radiation, and sure you can’t do that from a hundred yards without frying everything between you and the target. But if you had a subway turnstile with an exciter built into it, you could snipe all the tag numbers from a distant roof with a directional antenna. If those things had caught on, there’d be exciters everywhere and you’d be able to track anyone you wanted — christ, they even put RFIDs in the hundred-dollar bill for a while! Pickpockets could have figured out whose purse was worth snatching from half a mile a way!”

I’m speaking at the O’Reilly European Open Source conference in Amsterdam next week. I’m at a standards body meeting for the first couple days of the conference, but I get in Wednesday night and give a talk on the European Broadcast Flag on Thursday morning. Hope to see you there!

EuroOSCON targets the specific needs of European developers, programmers, strategists, entrepreneurs, and technologists, helping them to deliver the benefits of open source technology to their companies and organizations. Tutorials, sessions, panel discussions, and on-stage conversations focus on all aspects of building applications, services, and systems with an emphasis on practical skills.

Last Sunday I was a guest on the This Week in Tech podcast, recorded live at the Gallery Cafe in San Francisco. This is the podcast that a lot of the old TechTV/screensavers people migrated to — I had a TON of fun. Audio’s live!

Update: There’s video, too! (Thanks, Costoa!)

This coming Monday, October 10th, I’ll be doing a reading/signing at the Oxford Street Borders in London. Also appearing is Jon Courtenay-Grimwood, author of the newly released 9Tail Fox. The whole thing is organized by legendary cyberpunk doyenne Pat Cadigan, and the event promises to be a ton of fun. Festivities begin at 6:30, but Cadigan sez, “Come early, get good seats.”

When: Monday, October 10th, 6:30PM
Where: Borders Oxford Street, London (Oxford Circus tube)