Downloads

Ventus - Complete novel

I've made my first novel, Ventus, available as a free download, as well as excerpts from two of the Virga books. I am looking forward to putting up a number of short stories in the near future.

Complete novel: Ventus

To celebrate the August, 2007 publication of Queen of Candesce, I decided to re-release my first novel as an eBook. You can download it from this page. Ventus was first published by Tor Books in 2000, and and you can still buy it; to everyone who would just like to sample my work, I hope you enjoy this version.

I've released this book under a Creative Commons license, which means you can read it and distribute it freely, but not make derivative works or sell it.

Book Excerpts: Sun of Suns and Pirate Sun

I've made large tracts of these two Virga books available. If you want to find out what the Virga universe is all about, you can check it out here:

Major Foresight Project: Crisis in Zefra

In spring 2005, the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada (that is to say, the army) hired me to write a dramatized future military scenario. The book-length work, Crisis in Zefra, was set in a mythical African city-state, about 20 years in the future, and concerned a group of Canadian peacekeepers who are trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency. The project ran to 27,000 words and was published by the army as a bound paperback book.

If you'd like to read Crisis in Zefra, you can download it in PDF form.

Short Stories

I'll be adding new stories here periodically. First of all, you can try my Aurora-award nominated short story "Hopscotch." The year this was nominated, another of my stories was also nominated: "The Toy Mill," which I wrote with David Nickle. "The Toy Mill" won the award; but I've always been fond of "Hopscotch." Here it is, in its entirety excerpted from my collection The Engine of Recall.

Hopscotch

Personal tools

20th Century finally ends

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I want to congratulate all my American friends on the inauguration of Obama!

For me, the thing that decisively signals a split between old-style politics and something new, is President Obama's reluctance to give up his blackberry. In retrospect, it's astounding that someone in such a position should not have personal access to instant messaging of this kind. It suggests that there are always filters around the president--i.e. that someone else is filtering his view of reality--and limiting his ability to act. The presence of 21st century tools in the White House would be highly significant; as I wrote in Lady of Mazes, "technology is legislation." Technologies like instant messaging are likely to have a profound impact on process that, at least in the near term, is almost certainly going to be attributed to other causes.

The fact is that you haven't just elected a president. If he gets to keep it, then you've also elected a blackberry; and nobody yet knows what that is going to mean.