I could not be happier right now! My novella, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (published in my collection Overclocked) just won the Locus Award for best novelette of 2006. A million thanks to everyone who voted for it — I’ve got a 12h plane ride coming up, and this’ll keep me warm the whole way.

Also: check out the awesome company I’m in: Vernor Vinge and Ellen Kushner and Charlie Stross and Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and Naomi Novik!

This is the third Locus Award I’ve won in a row. A million thanks to Eileen Gunn for delivering this acceptance speech on my behalf: “Systems administrators are the unsung heroes of the twenty first century, our tireless morlocks who keep the entire universe running. The best sysadmins I’ve met treat their jobs as holy callings. They understand that they’re keeping the infrastructure of the information age alive and functional.

Many thanks to my sysadmin, Ken Snider, and to all the other sysadmins who make my life possible. And many thanks to Jim Baen and Eric Flint for publishing this. ”

Best Science Fiction Novel:

Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

Best Fantasy Novel:

The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra)

Best First Novel:

Temeraire: His Majesty’s Dragon/Throne of Jade/Black Powder, Naomi Novik (Del Rey; Voyager); as Temeraire: In the Service of the King (SFBC)

Best Young Adult Book:

Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperTempest)

Best Novella:

“Missile Gap”, Charles Stross (One Million A.D.)

Best Novelette:

“When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth”, Cory Doctorow (Baen’s Universe 8/06)

Best Short Story:

“How to Talk to Girls at Parties”, Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)

Link

Midnight.Haulkerton, the band that recorded a song based on my collection Overclocked, have just released the song elements themselves under a CC license for your remixing pleasure. Joel Falconer from Midnight.Haulkerton sez,

Today, we released the remix pack for the Overclocked song. Now listeners can remix, re-sing or do whatever they want with it. All the individual tracks that make up the song have had all their effects stripped and are now stuffed in a zip.

Link

Jesse has created a podcast feed containing all the stories from my collection Overclocked — these all appeared on my podcast, but not in a neatly packaged form like this. Here’s the feed. Thanks, Jesse!

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.

Link

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

Link

The finalists for the Locus Award for the best science fiction of 2006 have been announced and I’m proud as anything to announce that two of my novelettes made the shortlist, I, Row-Boat and When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (both are from my new collection Overclocked). The list is filled with really wonderful fiction. As I mentioned before, 2006 was a banner year for sf.

Link

(via Memoirs of a Vulture Princess)

Next Thursday, March 29 at 6:30, I’ll be doing a drop-in signing and meet-and-greet at the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego. They’ve got a stack of copies of Overclocked (my new short story collection) in stock. I hope to see you there!

When: Thursday, March 29: 6:30-7PM
Where: Mysterious Galaxy Books, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302, San Diego, CA 92111, 858.268.4747

Link

I just signed the contracts on a comic book deal for six of my stories with IDW. They got the exclusive right to sell commercial comics based on my stories, but those stories are already under Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike/Noncommercial licenses that allow fans to make non-commercial comics (and films, etc) from them. My agent, Russell Galen, wrote a nifty little clause spelling this out (see below).

Lots of people have asked me whether doing a non-commercial CC release makes it impossible to sell commercial rights to a traditional publisher. Here’s how it can work:

The exclusive rights granted to Licensee hereunder are subject to a pre-existing Creative Commons license which grants members of the public the irrevocable and nonexclusive right to create their own adaptations of the Licensed Property, including comic books. Such Creative Commons-licensed works may not be sold or distributed for profit. Licensee acknowledges that under the terms of this Creative Commons license, members of the public may create comic book version of the Licensed Property for non-commercial distribution. Licensor agrees not to license the rights which are granted to Licensee hereunder to any competitor of Licensee or to any commercial enterprise intending to create adaptations of the Works for commercial distribution.

Here’s the list of stories that are being adapted:

Anda’s Game
I, Robot
After the Siege
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth
Nimby and the D-Hoppers
Craphound