Here’s part two of my podcast of my novella-in-progress called “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow/Now is the Best Time of Your Life.”
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I recently did an interview with Oort Cloud, a killer copy-friendly science fiction writing site. We talked a lot about creative process, writing (and, of course, copyright).
I mentioned back in March that IDW comics is doing a series of six comics based on my short stories, with a Creative Commons-licensed collection at the end of the series. I’ve just gotten my first cover for the series, for my story Anda’s Game, designed by kick-ass comics artist Sam Kieth. Man, that’s h4wt, and the script, written by Dara Naraghi (I blogged his webcomics back in October), is fantastic.
I mentioned back in March that IDW comics is doing a series of six comics based on my short stories, with a Creative Commons-licensed collection at the end of the series. I’ve just gotten my first cover for the series, for my story Anda’s Game, designed by kick-ass comics artist Sam Kieth. Man, that’s h4wt, and the script, written by Dara Naraghi (I blogged his webcomics back in October), is fantastic.
I’m giving a reading with cyberpunk legend Rudy Rucker in San Francisco next Wednesday, as part of Terry Bisson’s SFinSF series. We’ll each read, then Terry moderates a discussion between us. Hope to see you there!
Wednesday, May 16th, 7PM
Variety Children’s Charity
The Variety Preview Room
582 Market St. @ Montgomery
1st floor of The Hobart Bldg.
I’ve just started podcasting a new story, a novella-in-progress called “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow/Now is the Best Time of Your Life.” It’s a long, weird adventure story about the failure of futurism and the difference between “progress” and “change,” all about immortal children stalking the bones of ruined cities in lethal mechas. Disney fans will recognize the title as coming from the amazing, weird, awful and wonderful Carousel of Progress ride that Disney built for GE at the 1964 World’s Fair in NYC, and subsequently moved to Disneyland, then Walt Disney World.
I’m presently about 18,000 words into this — final length is probably somewhere north of 30,000 words — and I’m planning on reading about 30 minutes’ worth of audio every week.
I piloted the mecha through the streets of Detroit, hunting wumpuses. The mecha was a relic of the Mecha Wars, when the nation tore itself to shreds with lethal robots, and it had the weird, swirling lines of all evolutionary tech, channelled and chopped and counterweighted like some freak dinosaur or a racecar.
I loved the mecha. It wasn’t fast, but it had a fantastic ride, a kind of wobbly strut that was surprisingly comfortable and let me keep the big fore and aft guns on any target I chose, the sights gliding along on a perfect level even as the neck rocked from side to side.
The pack loved the mecha too. All six of them, three aerial bots shaped like bats, two ground-cover streaks that nipped around my heels, and a flea that bounded over buildings, bouncing off the walls and leaping from monorail track to rusting hover-bus to balcony and back. The pack’s brains were back in dad’s house, in the old Comerica Park site. When I found them, they’d been a pack of sick dogs, dragging themselves through the ruined city, poisoned by some old materiel. I had done them the mercy of extracting their brains and connecting them up to the house network. Now they were immortal, just like me, and they knew that I was their alpha dog. They loved to go for walks with me.
Verbotomy, an online game that challenges people to invent words, create definitions for them, and use them in sentences, is using my short story collection Overclocked for its raw material this week — they’ve come up with some great words already!
Mimeopath
Created by: toadstool57
Pronunciation: mim-ee-oh-path
Sentence: Jill did a mimeopath of herself in her prom dress, handing it out to everyone she knew and didn’t know.
Etymology: mimeograph, psychopath
Verbotomy, an online game that challenges people to invent words, create definitions for them, and use them in sentences, is using my short story collection Overclocked for its raw material this week — they’ve come up with some great words already!
Mimeopath
Created by: toadstool57
Pronunciation: mim-ee-oh-path
Sentence: Jill did a mimeopath of herself in her prom dress, handing it out to everyone she knew and didn’t know.
Etymology: mimeograph, psychopath
David Weinberger, author of the brand new Everything is Miscellaneous, a book about how the Internet is destroying traditional notions of organization, subject and heirarchy, did a recent interview with me about metadata and civil liberties. He’s posted it as the first part of a podcast series of interviews with interested parties.
I’m almost finished Everything is Miscellaneous, and it’s fantastic — I’ll post a review very soon!
A reminder! Today is my last official day at USC and some of my students are throwing a BBQ for me at the Annenberg Center, off campus. The event is sponsored by the USC Free Culture club, and kicks off at 6:30. All are welcome!
They’re also doing a Flickr photo hunt, scouring the campus for useful objects to photograph and put on Flickr on a Creative Commons license — that kicks off at 11AM.
