This may be my favorite Gibson book of all time. - Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow sure seems to have liked Spook Country. I didn't get into Gibson's last novel. Some of the marketing ideas were cool but for some reason it just didn't grab me. The linear style didn't build the suspense level that I sought. But I'm going to give this one a shot.

Gibson has a habit of writing physical places I've been to into his novels. I recall in All Tomorrow's Parties the main character walking down a street in San Francisco toward the location at which I was reading the book. Rattle tells me early on in this book a character checks into a Manhattan hotel that a number of MemeStreams users crashed in during the last HOPE, probably around the time the novel is set.

Anyone here reading it yet?

Boing Boing: William Gibson's Spook Country

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson's best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.
When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that serves as a guide through a surreal alternate world. Stephenson will adapt his novel for the miniseries, the first time the Hugo and Nebula award winner has written for TV.

This is either going to be really great or really aweful. There is no middle ground with stuff like this.

SCI FI Wire | Diamond Age going to TV

It used to be the case that people who didn't read books on a regular basis weren't very smart, but that was back when books were all there really was to read. I don't read books on a regular basis. I seem to read the internet instead. I'm quite well informed on current events, but I tend to prefer my information in bite sized morsels. My attention span sucks. I'm not willing to make the commitment to sit down and read some 800 page tome, even if its a really, really good 800 page tome.

So I enjoy getting the odd SciFi short story off the net. All of the fun associated with reading a real sci fi story, without having to invest a lot of time. Rudy Rucker, one of my favorite Sci Fi authors has started a totally free Internet short story magazine called Flurb. This could be a good source of entertainment when I'm sick of starting at serious discussions about the power of the presidency in war time. The name of the magazine comes from the story I'm linking here, published in their first issue, which I enjoyed and I think sums up what I like about Rudy Rucker and what I like about California at the same time.

Yes, the very summer when Jory had been casting about for a topic for his physics thesis—good Lord, that was forty years ago—he’d found a ring of magic mushrooms in a glen in the woods across the creek that cut through Gunnar’s farm. Turned out Gunnar knew about the mushrooms, not that he was interested in eating them. Gunnar claimed he’d once seen tiny old men and a single beautiful elf-woman dancing around the circle in the invisible light of the new moon.

Jory hadn’t seen dancing elves; he’d seen a hailstorm of bejeweled polyhedra.  He’d begun hopping from one to the other, climbing them like stepping-stones, like moving platforms in a videogame. The name for a new science—“rhizomal subdimension theory”—came in a crystalline flash from a blazing rhombicosidodecahedron. And quickly this incantatory phrase led to a supernal white-light vision of a new quantum cosmology.

Elves of the Subdimension - Rudy Rucker & Paul Di Filippo

If "religion is the opiate of the people", then immersive multiplayer 3D virtual worlds are hard-core Afghani heroin. My Mom will never make it back into the labor force...

A quick short story on Ubicomp by Bruce Sterling.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Google - 15 September 2006 - New Scientist Tech

Dragon*Con is America's largest, multi-media, popular arts convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film.

A number of MemeStreams users will be speaking at this year's DragonCon, including Elonka, myself, and likely Rattle. I'm on a panel on Network Neutrality, Hacking101/201/301, and possibly Evil Geniuses for a Better Tommorow. There are, of course, a plethora of other interesting guests, including EFF attorneys, Ralph Merkle and the Liftport group. I think Palindrome is also helping out with Space and Science this year. Do come.

Welcome to Dragon*Con 2006

Octavia Butler, the brilliant science fiction writer, reportedly died on Saturday following a fall.

Somehow I missed this. Very unfortunate.

Boing Boing: RIP, Octavia Butler,

Well, apparently some nutters nipped a life-size Dalek model and are now holding it ransom until they get further instructions as to what to do with it from Doctor Who.

Hello, Reality? This is fandom calling... Dalek Kidnapped, news at 11

] Consider yourself lucky if you've ever had a traveling
] companion as fascinating as William Gibson is in No Maps
] for These Territories.

I had never heard of this before!

Amazon.com: DVD: William Gibson - No Maps for These Territories

Vodaphone's futurism magazine has an excerpt from Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe.

receiver: Eastern Standard Tribe

] As they walked along, Mike gave a shrug and a twitch just
] so. That was enough cue for his Epiphany wearable. Its
] overlay imaging shifted into classic manga/anime: the
] manzanita branches morphed into scaly tentacles. Now the
] houses that edged the canyon were heavily timbered, with
] pennants flying. High ahead was a castle, the home of
] Grand Duke Hwa Feen...

Free Vernor Vinge short story on wearable/ubiquitous computing.

Vernor Vinge: Synthetic Serendipity