Toronto’s Brian McLachlan surprised me at last week’s signing at the Merril Collection with this awesome piece of pro-remix fan-art. It makes a nice counterpoint to my wife Alice’s birthday present of a few years back, in which I’m a superhero. Thanks, Brian!

The current New Scientist has a fine interview and feature about my latest novel, For the Win:

What do gold farmers think about their lot?
The gold farmers are a lot less worried about being exploited in real life than they are about being hunted mercilessly in the game. They encounter an awful lot of racism when they move around in games. Anyone with a Chinese name or talking in Chinese is immediately accused of being a gold farmer. If you are on a server where players can attack each other, people will try to kill you. They did have stories about being exploited, too, but a lot of them are 17 and still can’t believe they’re being paid to play video games all day.

When do you set the action in For the Win?

At a time when 8 out of 10 of the world’s top economies are virtual economies. Scarily, in 2001 the game EverQuest was ranked 77 in the world – on par with Russia as it was then.

Cory Doctorow: My computer says no

Last year, my novel Makers was published and syndicated free as a series of 81 blog-posts on Tor.com. Tor had the insanely creative people at Idiots’ Books produce 81 interlocking, tesselating illustrations, one for each installment, and made a sweet little Flash toy that let you play with making your own meta-illo by moving the tiles around.

Now, Idiots Books have released a limited edition set of physical cards that let you play the tile-game on your living room floor. I handed these out to folks on the For the Win tour, to great reactions. They’re $12, and you can get them now.

Makers Tile Game

Hey, Toronto! I’m coming home tonight for the Canadian launch of For the Win! I’ll see you at 6:30PM at the Merril Collection on the lower level of the Lillian H. Smith Building, 239 College Street, just east of Spadina.