Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson converted my story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (from the collection Overclocked) into .mobi and .epub for easy viewing on an e-reader or mobile device. I probably get more fan mail for Sysadmins than for any other story, and it won the Locus Award the year it came out (it was later adapted to comics by JC Vaughn for the IDW book Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now). Give it a read!
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This is pretty cool: Berlin’s C-base hackerspace has spawned a theatre troupe called C-artre. They’ve produced a theatrical adaptation of my short story “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” (from my collection Overclocked) and they’re staging it later this month at Berlin’s Transmediale festival.

Josh Swinehart made this cute procedural movie using my story Printcrime as a script. Cool!

Fernando Orbis, a reader in Spain, was inspired to translate my story I, Robot (from my collection Overclocked) into European Spanish. He says he did it to practice, and “because when I tried to find a translation in your website to share it with some friends that do not know enough English I did not find any and neither I found your book ‘Overclocked’ edited in Spanish.” Gracias, Fernando!

Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, Detective de Policía de Tercer Grado, Esfera NorteAmericana de Comercio, Tercer Distrito, Cuarta Prefectura, Segunda División (Parkdale) había tenido muchas aventuras en su distinguida carrera, atrapando a sinvergüenzas con una imbatible combinación de instinto y devoción al deber sin restricciones. Había sido condecorado en tres ocasiones distintas por su comandante y por el Gerente Regional de Armonía Social, y su madre mantenía un altar dedicado a sus recortes de prensa y menciones que ocupaba la mayoría de la atiborrada sala de estar de su apartamento en Steeles Avenue.

Aunque ninguna cantidad de técnica o devoción policial le era de utilidad en la tarea de de preparar a su hija de doce años para ir al colegio.

—Mueve el culo, jovencita, fuera de la cama, en pie, cagar-ducharse-afeitarse, o juro por dios que te sacudo hasta ponerte como un tomate y te saco por la puerta completamente desnuda, ¿capichi?

El montículo bajo las mantas gruñó y siseó.

—Eres un padre terrible—dijo—. Y nunca te he querido.

La voz sonaba indistinta, amortigüada por la almohada.

—Buah buah—dijo Arturo, examinando sus uñas—. Lamentarás haber dicho eso cuando haya muerto de cáncer.

El montículo, cuyo nombre era Ada Trouble Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, echó a un lado las sábanas y se incorporó de un salto.

—¿Te estás muriendo de cáncer? ¿Es cáncer de testículos?—Ada aplaudía y daba grititos de alegría—¿Me puedo quedar con tus cosas?

Yo, robot

Over the weekend, two educators wrote to me to tell me about blogs that contain curricular material based on my books.

The first, from Donald Riggs at Drexel College in Philadelphia, contains links and supplementary material for students reading my second short story collection, Overclocked. Donald put the material together because Overclocked was Drexel’s book of the year, given to the entire freshman class (I visited campus in November and met with students, taught a writing program, and gave a lecture). He’s got a ton of good supplementary links and glossaries explaining the technical and genre terms for a lay audience.

The second, from Deborah Menkart at the Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People ’s History project is a recommendation for teachers whose students are working with Howard Zinn’s brilliant “Peoples’ History” books to include Little Brother in their works.

Coming from a family of teachers (both parents, brother) and serving on faculty at two universities at present (Open University, UK and University of Waterloo, Canada), I’m always intensely gratified when educators use my material with their students.

John did a wicked-cool set of data-visualizations of the text of my story Anda’s Game: “I picked terms for the trees that were relevant to the themes of the story – gold, for in-game items and Fahrenheit, which is a clan in the story.”

Roy Trumbull (who previously recorded a free podcast of my story The Super Man and the Bugout) has just recorded another podcast, this time of my story Craphound, my first-ever professional publication. It’s a nostalgic story about aliens who come to earth for our yardsales and the humans whom they befriend. It’s the third audio adaptation so far, and it sounds great. Roy’s a terrific reader.

Craphound had wicked yard-sale karma, for a rotten, filthy alien bastard. He was
too good at panning out the single grain of gold in a raging river of
uselessness for me not to like him — respect him, anyway. But then he found the
cowboy trunk. It was two months’ rent to me and nothing but some squirrelly
alien kitsch-fetish to Craphound.

So I did the unthinkable. I violated the Code. I got into a bidding war with a
buddy. Never let them tell you that women poison friendships: in my experience,
wounds from women-fights heal quickly; fights over garbage leave nothing behind
but scorched earth.

Craphound spotted the sign — his karma, plus the goggles in his exoskeleton,
gave him the advantage when we were doing 80 kmh on some stretch of back-highway
in cottage country. He was riding shotgun while I drove, and we had the radio on
to the CBC’s summer-Saturday programming: eight weekends with eight hours of old
radio dramas: “The Shadow,” “Quiet Please,” “Tom Mix,” “The Crypt-Keeper” with
Bela Lugosi. It was hour three, and Bogey was phoning in his performance on a
radio adaptation of _The African Queen_. I had the windows of the old truck
rolled down so that I could smoke without fouling Craphound’s breather. My arm
was hanging out the window, the radio was booming, and Craphound said “Turn
around! Turn around, now, Jerry, now, turn around!”

Craphound on Internet Archive, MP3 download

See also: Super Man and the Bugout reading: what if Superman had been a nice Jewish boy from Toronto

The fan-translations of my short-short story Printcrime keep on rolling in: today there’s one in Hiligaynon (an Austronesian language spoken in Western Visayas in the Philippines) and another in Romanian, contributed, respectively, by Lorna Belviz-Pajo and Alex Brie. It’s just so wicked-cool to see your work take on a life of its own — I didn’t even know that Hiligaynon existed until a few minutes ago!

Krimen nga pang-imprenta (Hiligaynon), Crima Printării (Romanian)

Friday’s post announcing that a fan named Eduardo Mercer had translated my story Printcrime into Brazilian Portuguese sparked two more translations; Luis Filipe Silva translated the story into European Portuguese and Paul Pajo translated it into Filipino. I’m particularly excited about the Filipino translation; I think it might be the first story of mine to be translated into Filipino!

Filipino fan-translation

European Portuguese fan-translation

See also: Printcrime in Portuguese