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

guest of honour

Oct 17, 2011

My tentative SFCOntario schedule

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I'll be Canvention Guest of Honour this year. Here's what's up

This is a very preliminary schedule and may be subject to change, amendment, eliding, obfuscation or eructation at any time. In particular, I may add spontaneous interpretive dance sessions in any empty slot I find.

Opening Ceremonies – Fri. 7 PM, Ballroom BC

Canvention Guest of Honour interview – Sat. 11 AM, Ballroom BC (Laurence Schoen as interviewer.)

Linguistics for Fiction – Sat. 3 PM, Solarium
From Tolkien to Game of Thrones writers and moviemakers have paid attention to the development of created languages. What goes into creating an authentic language? How do biology and psychology help determine language? This panel will introduce you to the study of languages on Earth and to what may determine the development of language on an alien world. (Matthew Johnson(M), Alex Pantaleev, Lawrence Schoen, Karl Schroeder)

Kaffeeklatsch – Sat. 4:00 PM, Room 207

Sun of Suns Graphic Novel Sneak Peek – Sat. 6 PM, Parkview

Aurora Award Banquet – Sun. 11 PM Shade Restaurant

Aurora Award Ceremony – Sun. 12 PM. I'll be MC'ing.

Cyberpunk: Is It Dead? Did It Ever Really Exist?- Sun. 2 PM Ballroom
A
Bruce Sterling once said that if you claim to be writing cyberpunk, you aren’t. Others who have been linked to the cyberpunk movement have disavowed any knowledge of its actions. What is this literary movement in science fiction, and why do writers seem to either run towards or away from the label? (Kathryn Allan, Simon McNeil, Ira Nayman(M), Karl Schroeder, Allan Weiss)

Closing Ceremonies – Sun. 3 PM, Ballroom BC

Jul 27, 2009

My O'Reilly talk is now online

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14 minutes of me

I gave a keynote address on "the rewilding: a metaphor" at the O'Reilly Open Source 2009 convention last week. It was recorded, and you can now watch it here:

The talk is notable for the number of times I go "um" and refer to my notes; that's mostly because I was called in at the very last minute, and was literally preparing the presentation on the plane. I scrawled it on my iRex tablet, which you'll see me referring to as I talk.

The key ideas--the central metaphor of "the rewilding" are part of a really big research program I'm in the middle of. It's the capstone to all the ideas that went into two of my novels, Ventus and Lady of Mazes. Those two books form a thematic whole, but their statement's not complete. They need a final book, and The Rewilding will be that book--if I can pull it all together in my own mind.

O'Reilly was a bit of a testbed for that--to see if I could bring it all together into a fifteen minute talk that would make sense and be relevant. You might think that's kind of like flying without an intellectual safety net, and it is; but life's too short, and as an SF writer, it's my job to point to new ideas, not necessarily to fully articulate them.

So try the talk, "um's" and all, and let me know what you thought.

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