Appeals Court, the gonzo novella that Charlie Stross and I wrote as a sequel to our story Jury Service, has just been published under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license on the Infinite Matrix:

The zeppelin turns out to be a maryceleste, crewed by capricious iffrits whose expert-systems were trained by angry, resentful trade-unionists in ransom for their pensions. The amount of abuse required to keep the ship on-course and to keep its commissary and sanitary systems in good working order is heroic.

Huw opens the door to the bridge, clutching his head, to find Bonnie perched on the edge of a vast, unsprung chair, screaming imprecations at the air. She breaks off long enough to scream at him. “GET THE FUCK OFF MY BRIDGE!” she hollers, eyes wild, fingers clawed into the arm-rests.

Huw leaps back a step, dropping the huge, suspicious sausage he’s been gnawing at. His diaper unravels as he stumbles.

Bonnie snorts, then gets back control. “Aw, sorry darlin’. I’m hopped up on hateballs. It’s the only way I can get enough FUCKING SPLEEN to MAKE THIS BUGGERY BOLLOCKY SCUM-SUCKING SHIP go where I tell it.” She sighs and digs around the seat cushion, coming up with a puffer which she inserts briefly into the corner of each eye. The tension melts out of her skinny shoulders and corded neck as Huw watches, alarmed.

Link, Link to plain text version for PDAs

I’m speaking about science fiction and Europe’s Broadcast Flag at the Stitch and Split culture event in Antwerp, Belgium next Tuesday:

American entertainment companies say they’re fighting piracy, but they’re going at it by punishing the innocent to get at the guilty. A pan-European digital-television restrictions proposal will turn the studios from companies that can control copying of movies into companies that can control the design of all DTV devices, that get to define how big your family is allowed to be, that get to take away all the rights you get under copyright law and sell them back to you, one painful, expensive dribble at a time. It’s not really a business plan: more like a urinary tract infection. Europe’s coming Broadcast Flag will ban open source for DTV, break the devices in your living room, and turn you into a truly captive audience. Get your torch and pitchfork, for this genuinely sucks — and you shouldn’t take it lying down!

I have a short-short story on the back page of this week’s Nature magazine, which just hit the stands today. The story’s called “Printcrime,” and it’s a little dystopian/utopian story about 3D printers and totalitarianism. Nature has generously granted me permission to reproduce the story in full.

The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da’s look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.

The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of Da’s customers had shopped him. The ipolice paid in high-grade pharmaceuticals — performance enhancers, memory supplements, metabolic boosters. The kind of things that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of things you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.

They destroyed grandma’s trunk, the one she’d brought from the old country. They smashed our little refrigerator and the purifier unit over the window. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner of his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad tangle of printer-wire.

I’ve just posted the third and final part of the podcast of Alice Taylor of the Wonderland games blog reading my story Anda’s Game. Subscribe to the podcast here (or via iTunes) or download the individual parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3