I’ve just uploaded a DIY mini-comic of my story “Printcrime,” which appears in my new short story collection, Overclocked. The mini was designed and illustrated by the talented illustrator Martin Cendreda, a former South Park animator whose new works include Dang! from Top Shelf Comix — a bitter and fantastic comic. The mini is published by Secret Headquarters, the best comic shop in LA.

To assemble the mini, download and print the PDF, then follow the directions included to fold it into a no-staple origami 8-page mini-comic — it’s all under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license — share it, tweak it, remix it, just don’t sell it.

4MB PDF

Dave Younce has created a great machine-generated remix of Printcrime, the lead story in my new collection Overclocked. Every time you reload the page, it reorders the sentences. Says Dave, “Some sentences inevitably repeat, which makes it
sound like poetry or drug-addled memories. Sometimes the story’s
outcome is the same, sometime’s it’s completely different, often its
nonsensical. It’s fun to refresh.”

The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way. God knew what he went through in prison. “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone.”

“There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for.” “Let me tell you the thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup.”

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I’ve been named one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for 2007 — part of a group of “250 leading executives, public figures and intellectuals – all 40 or younger – chosen from around the world.”

I think that this is basically the Davos Junior Woodchucks. I didn’t apply — I’m guessing that someone put me up for it. I don’t really know what this means, except that I’m invited to a weekend event in China in September with the other Woodchucks (who include Jimmy Wales and Nick Denton, so it can’t be all bad!).

Sweet! “Whuffie” (from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) worked its way into today’s episode of the web-comic “Terror Island!”

My new short story collection, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present is out this week, and I’ve just launched the website that goes with it. Overclocked collects six of my most recent stories: Printcrime, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, Anda’s Game, I, Robot, I Row-Boat, and After the Siege. Between them, these stories have been reprinted in five languages, won a Locus Award, been a Hugo finalist, and been selected for every one of the Best of the Year anthology series in the field, along with Michael Chabon’s tony Best American Short Stories collection.

All of these stories are available for download under a Creative Commons By-Noncommercial-Sharealike license. Take ’em, send them around, convert them to new formats, make new and cool things out of them — but don’t charge money for them without talking to me first — and no adding DRM to them, ever!

I’ve got a bunch of launch-events planned for the next couple months, in Toronto, San Francisco, LA, Vancouver, San Diego and Chapel Hill, NC (basically, places that I’m going to for work). I might be able to line up NYC too — but it’s too soon to tell. Details for all of them will be here, or you can sign up for my mailing list.

Additionally, you can get signed, personally inscribed copies of the book shipped right to your door. Canadians, contact Bakka Books in Toronto before Feb 1 with your order, Americans and others get in touch with Secret Headquarters in LA.

The first two launches are in Toronto at Bakka Books on Feb 1 at 7PM, and in San Francisco at Borderlands Books, along with Rudy Rucker, on Feb 8 at 7PM.

Each short story is an idea bomb with a candy coating of human drama, wrapped in shiny tech tropes and ready to blow your mind. Overclocked is SF info-warfare ammunition of the highest caliber, so load up, move out, and take no prisoners…let Asimov sort em out. Overclocked, which you probably recognize as a computer term for running a processor faster than the clock rate it’s rated for, generally courting some sort of meltdown, is a fantastic collection of stories about people living with technology for better or worse and you should feel free to stop reading here and just go buy the book. At least if there’s a drop of geekazoid blood anywhere in your veins, which there is or you wouldn’t be here… The hard part of all this is that every one of these stories deserves consideration for a Hugo and I’d hate to see him split his own vote as a result. Not that it matters. What matters is that this is a collection really worth reading, sharing, downloading and generally infecting others with. Overclocked is SF info-warfare ammunition of the highest caliber. Load up, move out, and remember, take no prisoners…let Asimov sort em out. – SFRevu

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