The future has caught up with the visions of the original cyberpunk writers — their virtual communities, online identities, encrypted data packets, communication gadgets, and rampant digital viruses are all here — and now the future’s uncharted territory is about intellectual property and copyright protection. Many of the original cyberpunk crew have retreated to the present and the past, while Cory Doctorow has stepped up to the future.
The preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award came out yesterday, and my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is one of six novels that made the first cut. Between now and Feb 15, my colleagues in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will vote on a final ballot. It’s exhilarating to have just gotten this far, but it will be truly amazing if my first novel makes the final ballot. If you’re a SFWA member, I hope you’ll remember the book when your preliminary ballot arrives in the mail!
Paladin of Souls — Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, Oct03)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom — Cory Doctorow (Tor, Feb03)
Omega — Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov03)
Perfect Circle — Sean Stewart (Small Beer Press, Jun04)
Conquistador — S.M. Stirling (Roc, Feb04)
The Knight — Gene Wolfe (Tor, Jan04)
I was interviewed for an article on reputation economies in the current issue of the Utne Reader — the piece is online now!
In the 2003 science fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, author Cory Doctorow imagines a society where all of life’s necessities are free, and market laws such as supply and demand cease to exist for everything else. Instead of trading in a hard currency, citizens living in this “post-scarcity economy” measure their wealth with an ephemeral, reputation-based currency called “Whuffie.” Doing something that benefits the community, like baking a cake or writing beautiful poetry, increases a person’s Whuffie, while causing a traffic accident or publishing clumsy prose can temporarily put you in a virtual poorhouse. Everyone is wired into the Internet via brain implants and can routinely view and modify others’ standing instantly (and free of charge), ultimately making one’s status the subject of majority opinion.
This story appears in my collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, 2007
Salon
Best American Short Stories, Michael Chabon, ed, 2005
Podcast read by Alice Taylor of Wonderland: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
This is a riff on the way that property-rights are coming to games, and on the bizarre spectacle of sweat-shops in which children are paid to play the game all day in order to generate eBay-able game-wealth. When I was a kid, there were arcade kings who would play up Gauntlet characters to maximum health and weapons and then sell their games to nearby players for a dollar or two — netting them about $0.02 an hour — but this is a very different proposition indeed.
There are a lot of firsts in this story:
I’m really proud of this one: I read it to an audience at the WorldCon last September and the response was really warm and enthusiastic.
more
A group of “radio pirates” in the US are making part of Eastern Standard Tribe come true:
Lynch, 31, is one of a handful of iPod owners using the device to transmit FM radio stations from their car. He uses a bumper sticker on the back of his fender that reads “iPod @ 89.1 FM” to let passers-by know how to tune in…
“I put on some profanity. Comedy, R-rated comedy, Chris Rock’s early stuff. Then I called [his friend] up on his cell phone and he was two cars behind me. I said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but somebody up here is broadcasting swear words! Tune to 89.1FM.’ He turns to the station and he’s like, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’ It was a big joke for a few minutes.”
Once a friend suggested using a bumper sticker to advertise the frequency on which he was transmitting, Lynch was off and running. He became his own mini-pirate radio station.
“For four car-lengths around me was this little bubble of â€â€? me! Whatever I wanted to listen to! So I could be listening to Chris Rock talking about dating and meeting women in a club and then the next song go straight to Neil Sadaka.”
(Thanks, Ken!)
Vodaphone’s Receiver magazine has just reprinted an excerpt from Eastern Standard Tribe!
Popular Science, October, 2004
Nalo Hopkinson sent me this photo of my pal and collaborator Karl Schroeder accepting the Sunburst Award (presented by Michelle Sagara) for my short story collection, A Place So Foriegn and Eight More on my behalf at last night’s ceremony at Toronto’s Merril Collection sf library. Here’s the speech he read for me:
It is a cliche to note that receiving an award conveys an honour upon its recipient, but this is a stupendous honour and I would be remiss if I failed to tell you all how mightily chuffed I am. I am deeply sorry that I am not able to be there tonight: I am with you in spirit.
The list of people who deserve to be thanked for this is long indeed: the friends and colleagues; the fans and readers; the editors and critics; the collaborators and the writers who inspired me — and the jury, them too! My most sincere thanks to all of you.
No writer is an island, no idea is original, no effort is a solo effort. We stand upon the shoulders of giants, we collaborate with our colleagues and with the immortal words of our dead literary ancestors. Literature — indeed, all human endeavor — is dignified and uplifted through collaboration and cooperation. We sit atop a great erected infrastructure of human invention and effort, all of it embodied in the bricks and boards that surround us, and, most importantly, in the traditional knowledge that allows each generation to improve upon the bricks and boards of the last one.
The writer is engaged in dialog with the world and with posterity. Our words go on to form a layer of the substrate of human creation. Those who tell us that our words, our art and our posterity are best served with strong locks and high fences are *not on our side*. No writer could pen a single word but for the rich humus of public domain effort with which we garden our notions and conceits.
So thank you all, and thanks most of all to our ancestors, the bringers of fire and the inventors of the wheel, the Judith Merrils and the Phyllis Gotleibs, the Gilgameshes and the golems, the Turings and the Teslas. Thanks to the brave pirates who continue to preserve our posterity in the face of outrageous insult to creation. Thanks to the readers and to you all.
My short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More, won the Sunburst Award for the best Canadian sf book of the year. There’s a
ceremony commemorating the event on the 23d of September in Toronto, at the Merril Collection. I (really!) wish I could be there, but I’m committed to speaking at a UN meeting on Free/Open Source Software in Geneva on that day, so Karl Schroeder, the brilliant author of Permanence and Ventus, will accept on my behalf.
SUNBURST AWARD CEREMONY
September 23, 2004  7-9pm
Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, Lilian H.
Smith Branch of the Toronto Public Library
239 College Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto
for more info: (416) 393-7748
The event is open to the public and free of charge. Refreshments will be
served.
(Thanks Peter!)
Popular Science, September 2004
