I’ve just kicked off a new short story reading on my podcast. I Love Paree is a short story I co-wrote with Michael Skeet, originally published in Asimov’s Magazine in December 2000. It’s the story of a business consultant living in revolutionary Paris during an anti-corporatist uprising, and what he does after he’s conscripted into the Communard Army.

Power-armor fired a round into the ceiling, sending plaster skittering over his suit. The screaming stopped. The PA thundered again. “Your attention, please. These premises are nationalized by order of the Pro-Tem Revolutionary Authority of the Sovereign Paris Commune. You are all required to present yourselves at the third precinct recruitment center, where your fitness for revolutionary service will be evaluated. As a convenience, the Pro-Tem Revolutionary Authority of the Sovereign Paris Commune has arranged for transport to the recruitment center. You will form an orderly single-file queue and proceed onto the buses waiting outside. Please form a queue now.”

My mind was racing, my heart was in my throat, and my Gitane had rolled off the table and was cooking its way through the floor. I didn’t dare make a grab for it, in case one of the frères got the idea that I was maybe going for a weapon. I managed to spot Sissy, frozen in place on the dance floor, but looking around, taking it in, thinking. The trustafarians milled toward the door in a rush. I took advantage of the confusion to make my way over to her, holding her hat and jacket. I grabbed her elbow and steered her toward Power-armor.

“M’ser,” I said. “Please, a moment.” I spoke in my best French, the stuff I keep in reserve for meetings with snooty Swiss bastards who are paying me too much money.

Power-armor sized me up, thought about it, then unlatched the telephone handset from his chest-plate. I brought it up to my ear.

“What is it?”

“Look, this girl, she’s my mother’s niece, she’s only been here for a day. She’s young, she’s scared.”

I Love Paree, Part 1

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(Image: Poor communards, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from moacir’s photostream)

My latest Publishers Weekly column is “New York, Meet Silicon Valley,” about the things that Silicon Valley can teach NYC publishing (cheap experimentation and celebrating failure as the fastest way to learn) and what it can’t deliver (working DRM):

This marks a key difference between New York publishing and Silicon Valley. Unlike New York publishing, Silicon Valley’s products remain experimental long after they reach the marketplace. Google can change its search layout in seconds flat, try it out on a million searchers, crunch the data, revise the experiment and do it again, a hundred times a day if they wish. And bad ideas can be just as interesting as good ideas, because when it doesn’t cost anything to find out how bad an idea is, you can afford to be pleasantly and enormously surprised when it turns out that, say, people really do want to play Pac-Man on their search-results page.

With a Little Help: New York, Meet Silicon Valley

Hey DC! Tor Books is bringing me to your area for the American Library Association conference this coming weekend, and while I’m in town, I’ve signed on to do a couple of public events I hope to see you at!

On Sunday, June 27 at 3PM, I’m speaking at Red Emma’s books in Baltimore, in an event co-sponsored by the Baltimore Node hackerspace.

On Monday, June 28 at 6:30PM, I’m speaking at a special edition of DC Copynight, co-sponsored by Public Knowledge and hosted by the New America Foundation. Many thanks to Thomas “cmdln” Gideon of DC Copynight for setting this up!

Both events are free!

Neale sez, “I liked ‘Little Brother’ so much that I bought a copy for my niece and then based an entire Summer Hacking School around it. The kids were really excited about the premise of the book when I explained it to them tonight, and the fact that it’s available for free in so many
formats was just gravy. I put ePub and j2me versions on 5 mobile phones before they left for the night.”

My latest Guardian column, “The mobile revolution has arrived,” describes the way that touring with a rooted NexusOne phone fundamentally changed the experience of being on a book-tour, delivering a touring author’s two most precious commodities: better food and more sleep.

Travelling with your own internet source is brilliant. At Atlanta airport, I was stuck for four hours while a monster storm hammered the building with barrages of lightning. Immediately, every one of the expensive Wi-Fi networks in the building went dead as thousands of stranded travellers tried to use them all at once. I found a corner with a mains outlet, plugged in the laptop, tethered my phone, and enjoyed my own private network connection. It wasn’t fast, but it was free and it worked.

I still have a US T-Mobile account from when I lived in the US, and I pay for the unlimited data plan there (which, like the Orange UK Sim I use here, has a bizarre and fraudulent definition of “unlimited” that includes a data cap). It’s easily worth keeping the account alive for those times that I’m back in the US – one day’s 3G savings (not having to pay for expensive hotel and airport broadband) pays for a month’s mobile service.

The mobile revolution has arrived