/ / Makers, News

Joris Peels from Shapeways liked the cover on the HarperCollins UK edition of my novel Makers, which features a variety of objects depicted in the novel as plastic model-parts attached to a sprue. Shapeways being a custom 3D printing shop, Joris whipped up an incredibly detailed 3D version of the cover illustration, which arrived in today’s post. Color me grateful, delighted and gobsmacked. Thanks, Joris!

Update: Joris adds, “The design was modeled by Shapeways Community member Dmitry Kobzar; He spent 13 hours and 7 minutes making it. He will be thrilled that you’re happy with it. The reason I asked Dmitry to model it was so we could make Makers come to life just like the people in your book do.”

We’re going to release the model files under a Creative Commons license. Watch this space!

Shapeways 3D printed version of the UK Makers cover


/ / News

Joris Peels from Shapeways liked the cover on the HarperCollins UK edition of my novel Makers, which features a variety of objects depicted in the novel as plastic model-parts attached to a sprue. Shapeways being a custom 3D printing shop, Joris whipped up an incredibly detailed 3D version of the cover illustration, which arrived in today’s post. Color me grateful, delighted and gobsmacked. Thanks, Joris!

Update: Joris adds, “The design was modeled by Shapeways Community member Dmitry Kobzar; He spent 13 hours and 7 minutes making it. He will be thrilled that you’re happy with it. The reason I asked Dmitry to model it was so we could make Makers come to life just like the people in your book do.”

We’re going to release the model files under a Creative Commons license. Watch this space!

Shapeways 3D printed version of the UK Makers cover


/ / Makers, News

Tor.com’s just posted the final iteration of the little rotating tile-game based on the Creative Commons-licensed illustrations that accompanied the serialization of my novel Makers. The 9×9 grid is truly a thing of awesome beauty.

Makers Tile Game, final 9×9 iteration now live

/ / News

Tor.com’s just posted the final iteration of the little rotating tile-game based on the Creative Commons-licensed illustrations that accompanied the serialization of my novel Makers. The 9×9 grid is truly a thing of awesome beauty.

Makers Tile Game, final 9×9 iteration now live

/ / Podcast

Here’s part eight of the podcast of my story in progress, MARTIAN CHRONICLES, being written for Jonathan Strahan’s YA Mars book, LIFE ON MARS.

Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com

John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.

MP3 Link

/ / News

I’m to be the guest of honor at ICON 35: A Steam Powered Convention of the Future, to be held November 5-7, 2010 at the Cedar Rapids Marriott. This is a great, venerable regional con and I’m really looking forward to seeing some of Iowa! Hope to run into you there. And for those of you on the west coast, a reminder that I’ll be a special guest at Norwescon in Seattle, April 1-4, along with Vernor Vinge and many fine other writers, artists, and fans.

/ / Content, News


The Italian publisher Apogeo commissioned a professional Italian translation of my Creative Commons-licensed essay collection Content and released their edition as a free, noncommercial download!

Content:
Selezione di saggi sulla tecnologia, la creatività, il copyright

(Grazie, Fabio!)


/ / News

My latest Locus column, “Close Enough for Rock ‘n’ Roll,” discusses the way that the net makes it possible to do something almost as good as its offline equivalent for a fraction of the cost, and how that changes everything:


In other words, rock ‘n’ roll is cheap, experimental and fluid, and devotes most of its energy into the production of music. Orchestral music is expensive, formal and majestic, but tithes a large portion of its effort to coordination and overheads and maintenance.

If the Internet has a motif, it is rock ‘n’ roll’s Protestant Reformation thrashing against the orchestral One Church. Rock ‘n’ roll gets lots of wee kirks built in every hill and dale in which parishioners can find religion in their own ways; choral music erects majestic cathedrals that humble and amaze, but take three generations of laborers to build.

The interesting bit isn’t what it costs to replicate some big, pre-Internet business or project.

The interesting bit is what it costs to do something half as well as some big, pre-Internet business or project.

Cory Doctorow: Close Enough for Rock ‘n’ Roll

(Image: Rock-n-Roll Adventure Kids, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Invisible Hour’s photostream)