Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has just been published in Spain as Tocando Fondo, and in Japan as マジック・キングダムで落ちぶれて ハヤカワ文庫SF.

There’s lots to like about both editions, but my favorite things are one, Javier “Barrapunto” Candeira’s kick-ass introduction to Tocando Fondo, and two, the amazing cover on the Japanese edition.

Mitch did a project for a San Francisco State University course in Design and Industry in which he created three alternative covers for Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. He sez,

The cover titled “experimental” is a photo I shot of Tomorrowland with my Digital Rebel from the Monorail last year. I added vertical grain to it to give it a dissonant look. The type is terminal inspired.

“conventional” is a drawing of a robot action figure that I did a little while back which turned out to work really well with this project. Reminiscent of the animatronics in the story. This is my favorite of the covers.

Not much to say about the typographic cover other than I like the way your name turned out with the bisecting line.

Mark Forman is the podcaster who’s been serializing my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom read aloud, one chapter at a time, with backing from great, Creative Commons-licensed music. Today he concluded the reading with chapters nine and ten in one installment. Now he’s embarked upon his next project, reading Lessig’s magnificent Free Culture.

(Thanks, Mark!)

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.

Mark Forman, a podcaster, is reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom on his podcast with regular, chapter-by-chapter readings. He’s got the prologue and chapter one live now. Here’s the Podcast feed.

Tim Bennett has done a fantastic text remix of Down and Out. He says, “The text was generated by separating the novel’s sentences onto separate lines. Then I sorted them alphabetically from the last letter, to the first, so that sentences would cluster in roughly rhyming groups. From that process I refined the rhymes and constructed a short narrative.”

The sun was warm on my skin, and the flowers were in bloom
I woke disoriented and crabby, without my customary morning jolt of endorphin
I lurched out of the bed, naked, and thumped to the bathroom
I nearly started crying right then

I foraged a slice of bread with cheese and noticed a crumby plate in the sink
Lil shot me a look – she looked ready to wring my neck
She set her mug down with a harder-than-necessary clunk
I was an emotional wreck

I was hyperventilating, light-headed
“Lil,” I said, then stopped
I hated how pathetic I sounded
Lil folded her arms and glared

I threw my glass at the wall
She went nuts
Now I wanted to hit something besides the wall
I looked inside myself, and I saw that I didn’t have the guts

John Sanchez has translated the novel into Opish, “a children’s language comparable to Pig Latin.”

Opish is essentially English with the letters “op” added after every consonant. For example, Disney World becomes Dopisopnopeyop Woporoplopdop in Opish…

The Opish title is Dopowopnop anopdop Outop inop tophope Mopagopicop Kopinopgopdopomop and the author’s Opish name is Coporopyop Dopocopotoporopowop.

Peter sez, “Here’s Phillip Torrone reading ‘Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom’ on a Sony Librié. The Librié is the first device that uses the incredibly cool e-ink technology co-developed by Philips and Sony; according the a few scattered reports, it’s like reading actual paper. The Librié, being a Sony device, comes with the dumbest DRM ever: a library of 400 titles that evaporate off of your device in 60 days. Not no more! Here’s a wiki on the Librié that has some software you can use to create Librié books from ASCII files.”

(Thanks, Peter!)

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, Sydd Souza has run my Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom through a perl script that translated it into pirate speak:

I lived long enough t’ be seein’ th’ cure fer Davy Jones’ locker; t’ be seein’ th’ rise o’ th’ Bitchun Society, t’ learn ten languages; t’ compose three symphonies; t’ reckon me boyhood dream o’ takin’ up residence in Disney World; t’ be seein’ th’ Davy Jones’ locker o’ th’ workplace an’ o’ work.

I nerethought I’d live t’ be seein’ th’ tide when Keep A-Movin’ Dan would decide t’ deadhead until th’ heat Davy Jones’ locker o’ th’ Universe.

A conceit in my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is that our cellphones will disappear into our bodies, silently feeding us audio via cochlear implants and micing our throats to pick up sub-vocalizations (something I think I ripped off from Harry Harrison, though others have done it too). Now a DARPA program has produced a functional prototype of a subvocal pickup that can turn words you haven’t spoken into signals on the wire.

One system, being developed for DARPA by Rick Brown of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, relies on a sensor worn around the neck called a tuned electromagnetic resonator collar (TERC). Using sensing techniques developed for magnetic resonance imaging, the collar detects changes in capacitance caused by movement of the vocal cords, and is designed to allow speech to be heard above loud background noise.

DARPA is also pursuing an approach first developed at NASA’s Ames lab, which involves placing electrodes called electromyographic sensors on the neck, to detect changes in impedance during speech. A neural network processes the data and identifies the pattern of words. The sensor can even detect subvocal or silent speech. The speech pattern is sent to a computerised voice generator that recreates the speaker’s words.

(Thanks, John!)