IRC can be funny:
11:22 <jaybeepee> Vhata: Communications division is looking for some code
from you - something to do with Give 5 campaign (apparently
you did it last year) - any idea?
11:27 <Vhata> jaybeepee: who is asking?
11:27 <Vhata> jaybeepee: it's all on lizard, Alpha1 knows how to get to it?
11:32 <Alpha1> oh right
11:32 <Alpha1> ja I'm supposed to do the give 5 site soon
11:33 <jaybeepee> Vhata: Sue is asking - will pass on the message
11:40 -+- Alpha1 gets a phonecall from sue
11:41 <Alpha1> "the code is on lizard"
Cory Doctorow, author, blogger on one of my favourite blogs, and activist at the EFF (wikipedia article about him) has a new story up. He says:
Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of Fahrenheit 451 to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives.
Today, Infinite Matrix magazine published the latest of these, a story called "I, Robot," which describes the police state that would have to obtain if you were going to have a world where there was only one kind of robot allowed and only one company was allowed to make it
I liked it. It turns one of the most sacred science fiction ideas (Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics) into an analogy for DRM, one of the big bogeys of the tech world. It's good. Read it here.
While we're talking about free fiction and the three laws, I recently re-read the amazing Metamorphosis of Prime-Intellect. Go and read it NOW.
Next up in today's free fiction line-up. My two most favouritest web authors have recently started projects:
Pat Spacek was the writer for my favourite (seriously, I know this is the third time I've used the word, but they really are my bestest) web cartoon ever, The Parking Lot is Full. After it died, he started a new project, Neolithic Casserole. Unfortunately, things didn't pan out, as he explained in a very well thought out post on the neocass mailing list. However, he has moved on to two new blogs, which he explains in one of the blogs. He really is an excellent writer. Go and read his blogs:
The Shaved Ape Chronicles, his personal blog.
Fighting the Influence, a blog he writes from the viewpoint of a... slightly different person.
Finally, Joey Comeau is an amazing writer. He writes for the awesome webcomic A Softer World, and the brilliant Overqualified chronicles (in which he has just taken to writing to the RIAA and Google themselves!) and he has recently started publishing chapter by chapter of his new novella, Lockpick Pornography. In his words:
Here is what's happening. One, I am worried that I will be kicked out of school because I am $1400 short of my tuition. Talking to student loan clerks is like talking to a brick wall. I am storing my rage in my teeth.
Two, I've started writing a novel that is fucked up. It is called "Lockpick Pornography" and it is political and dirty and ranty and queer and it has crime and sex and good intentions. If you like A Softer World and/or Overqualified, I think you will enjoy it. I get emails all the time from you guys asking if I've written a book, or have considered writing one.
So this is what I'm going to do: I'm going to put the first chapter online for you to read, and to show your friends. It's dirty and it has some big words, but that's why you come here, for the intellectually justified filth. The first chapter goes up for free, and then I start taking donations! When I get a couple hundred dollars, I put up chapter two for everyone to see. When I get a couple hundred more, I put up chapter three. In this way I hope to not get kicked out of school while promoting the independent publishing options afforded by the internet!
I am going to do this for seven chapters, which will stand alone as a novella and offer you satisfaction while enabling me to expand beyond that into a full length novel and still find a publisher even though it was online!
Think of it as being a patron of the arts! I do the free webcomic A Softer World, and the free humor site Overqualified, and this novel would appear online for anyone who wanted to look. It's like funding public art.
Go and read them. Give Joey money if you can. I would. If I could.