Friday, January 13, 2006

Speak of the devil. Electronic copyright maven/SF author Cory Doctorow has posted a brand-new short-story. If you're into the socio-economic potential of "fabbing," you'll probably dig this.

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.


Click here to read "Printcrime" in its entirety.

On a related note, I recently asked my editor if I could have an e-book copy of "After the Martian Apocalypse." He consulted with the publisher. A few days later we got our answer: a firm "no." While "ATMA" is available in electronic format, Simon & Schuster refuses to give copies away -- even to authors. I'm not particularly upset, but I found this interesting.

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