Popular Science, September 2004
A Place So Foreign and Eight More, has won the 2004 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, winning out over such worthy competitors as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Robert Charles Wilson’s Blind Lake. I am bursting with pride.
The Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a
prized and juried award. Based on excellence of writing, it will
be presented annually to a Canadian writer who has had published
a speculative fiction novel or book-length collection of
speculative fiction any time during the previous calendar year.
Named after the first novel by Phyllis Gotlieb, one of the first
published authors of contemporary Canadian science fiction, the
award consists of: a cash award of $1000 and a medallion which
incorporates a specially designed “Sunburst” logo. The winner
will receive his or her award in fall 2004.
Eastern Standard Tribe is cited as background reading for the upcoming Cyberspace Law Committee meeting at the American Bar Association 2004 Annual Meeting:
The passage below is from Cory’s latest book, Eastern Standard Tribe. It’s a fun romp. In an early part of the book, the protagonist has a car accident, and he finds himself in need of a lawyer. So, where does he turn? The chat room for his Tribe. (You’ll have to read the book to understand the Tribal references). The exchange below highlights many of the issues under discussin by the Cyberspace Law Committee, and that’s why I’m including this passage here. As you’ll see, he not only finds a lawyer, and forms an attorney client relationship, but he also gets certification of the lawyer’s credentials, reviews his standard representation agreement in “smartcontract” form, and executes it. All without leaving the chat room.
For those of you not familiar with chat rooms, you may initially be confused by the syntax. It’s probably easiest to treat this as if it were a script. Each line starts with the “handle” of the person who’s talking in the Chat Room. “Trepan” is the client/protagonist. “Junta” is the lawyer. I’ve edited the passage somewhat to focus your attention on the cyberspace law issues.
ReVisions, edited by Isaac Szpindel and Julie Czerneda (with Charlie Stross)
This is the third collaboration I wrote with Charlie Stross — the other two being Flowers From Alice and Jury Service.
This time around, though, we did it in public, using a Movable Type blog. We exposed the whole process to the public, letting everyone see (and participate in!) the writing process.
more
Review:
Vector
I’ve found it kind of rare to stumble over a book that really speaks to me, that resonates, clicks in with a core aspect of my life. Eastern Standard Tribe is one of them.
I’ve never seen Amazon do this before — they’ve got Eastern Standard Tribe on sale at a 60 percent discount — that’s $9.58 for the new hardcover! Hell, that’s less that I get ’em for.
The paperback edition of my novel Eastern Standard Tribe is in production, and my publisher has requested an errata sheet with collected typos, spelling errors, consistency problems, etc. Last year, William Gibson solicited message-board feedback from his readers to help him produce the errata sheet for the paperback of Pattern Recognition, but I wanna go one better, so I’ve put up a Wiki (a kind of web-page that anyone can edit) for anyone who’s got a favorite EST correction that s/he wants to see made in the next edition.
Changes are due by July 21 — thanks in advance!
This is so freaking cool: my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has won the Locus Award for Best First Novel of 2003. The Locus Award is based on a popular poll of readers of the trade mag, a larger group than even the Hugo voters, making it the largest beauty contest in the field. I couldn’t be any happier: thanks everyone! Hope to see you at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston, where the award will be presented.
There’s a collaborative project underway to translate this novel into Spanish. The core volunteers have put their efforts to date on a Wiki so that others can play along.
(¡Gracis, Francisco!)
