Jury Service, by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow
Peter D. Tillman
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/stross-doctor
ow/stross-doctorow1.html
Here's another hot new story, thanks to Rich Horton's short-fiction
cheat-sheet [note 1] -- and it's a live one, folks.
Starts out as an unholy threeway with Ken MacLeod, Bruce Sterling, &
Vernor Vinge. Then, add Spinrad! Forward! Rucker! Drexler!
Post-Singularity millenial weirdness! Is this a new movement? In JS,
Stross & Doctorow are clearly the kitchen-sinkists... How many did I
miss, Charlie?
Here are some (pretty much spoiler-free) samples. Those with
hyper-delicate sensibilities may wish to proceed direct to the story now
-- but really, these amount to blurbs, aperitifs, hors d'oeuvres [note
2]:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first
century.
Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part,
they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the bottom of a
gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or
another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar
system with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the
sun. Except for the solitary lighthouse beam that perpetually tracks the
Earth in its orbit, the system from outside resembles a spherical
fogbank radiating in the infrared spectrum; a matrioshka brain, nested
Dyson orbitals built from the dismantled bones of moons and planets.
---
"Blrrrt. Greetings, tech-juror Rogers. I am a guidance iffrit from the
People's Magical Libyan Jamahiriya. Show me to representatives of the
People's Revolutionary Command Councils and I am required to intercede
for you. Polish me and I will install translation leeches in your
Broca's area, then assist you in memorizing the Qur'an and hadiths.
Release me and I will grant your deepest wish."
---
"A fractional-dimensional parasitic turd-gobbler from outer space?" Huw
says. "Have I got that right?"
---
"You pukes had better listen up right now! We are about to begin the
most dangerous part of the proceedings! Are those of you who believe in
physical resurrection all backed up to off-site storage? And are those
of you who don't all up to date on your life insurance policies? Because
if not, you're too fucking late, haa haa! It is time to open the box!"
---
"...As you can see, the genome of the said item is chimeric and shows
signs of crude tampering, but it's largely derived from drosophila, mus
musculus, and a twentieth-century situationist artist or politician or
something called Dan Quayle.... A self-propagating teleology meme.
Goal-seeking Neat Ideas are the most dangerous kind..."
Indeed. You'll not see another story like this in 2002. [note 3] Not to
be missed.
I haven't read much of Doctorow's stuff -- is the rest anything like
this? Ah, here's a biblio: http://www.craphound.com/fic/listing.html
[draws blank on most] Ah, "I Love Paree", Asimov's, December 2000 --
which is online! http://www.craphound.com/fic/paree.html
-- and it's a *terrific* story [note 4], and is fully compatible with
Stross's own full-bore tekno weirdouts. Good job, guys!
____________
Note 1)
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=i1oZ9.92%24Wd.8079526%40newssvr15.ne
ws.prodigy.com -- and I see I'm *way* behind on my SCI FICTION reading.
2) Hey, I'm a *lot* better at pulling blurbs than E. Datlow! With all
due respect... Note lame attempt to have it both ways in the
spoiler-warning dept.
3) Sorry, couldn't resist.
4) Ah, I see Rich Horton liked this one, too [sidebar,
http://www.craphound.com/fic/paree.html ]. What excellent taste you
have, Rich!
Excerpts copyright 2002 by Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow and SCIFI.COM
Enjoy! -- Pete Tillman
Read more of my reviews:
http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3GHSD9VY8XS4Q/
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/iplus/nonfiction/index.htm#reviews
http://www.sfsite.com/revwho.htm
Richard Horton
<til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>I haven't read much of Doctorow's stuff -- is the rest anything like
>this?
Somewhat, and getting more so.
Try his two stories online at Salon:
"Ownz0red", posted August 28, 2002,
<URL:http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/28/0wnz0red/>
"Liberation Spectrum", posted January 16, 2003
<URL:http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/01/16/liberation_spectrum/print.html>
(And thanks as always for the kind words.)
Also worth checking out in this vein is a story by those old farts,
Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker, "Junk DNA", in the January 2003
Asimov's.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Peter D. Tillman
>
> I haven't read much of Doctorow's stuff -- is the rest anything like
> this? Ah, here's a biblio: http://www.craphound.com/fic/listing.html
> [draws blank on most] Ah, "I Love Paree", Asimov's, December 2000 --
> which is online! http://www.craphound.com/fic/paree.html
> -- and it's a *terrific* story [note 4], and is fully compatible with
> Stross's own full-bore tekno weirdouts. Good job, guys!
> ____________
>
> 4) Ah, I see Rich Horton liked this one, too [sidebar,
> http://www.craphound.com/fic/paree.html ]. What excellent taste you
> have, Rich!
>
Well, crud -- I looked again, figuring it would be quicker to download
it than to find my paper copy -- and it's just a teaser. Sorry, folks.
I can't believe no-one's ever reprinted it!
Pete
--
"It's a sin to waste the reader's time" -- Larry Niven
Cory Doctorow
"Witpunk," from Four Walls Eight Windows press. 4W8W doesn't have its
forthcoming catalog up yet, but here's a notice of the antho:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~jstrahan/2003_01_26_archive.html#88234804
"Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in message news:<tillman-9D60D1...@news.fu-berlin.de>...
Charlie Stross
as <til...@aztec.asu.edu> declared:
> Starts out as an unholy threeway with Ken MacLeod, Bruce Sterling, &
> Vernor Vinge. Then, add Spinrad! Forward! Rucker! Drexler!
> Post-Singularity millenial weirdness! Is this a new movement? In JS,
> Stross & Doctorow are clearly the kitchen-sinkists... How many did I
> miss, Charlie?
Not sure; it wasn't deliberate, that much I remember.
"Jury Service" started out as a 2000 word fragment sitting on my
hard disk. I couldn't figure out what to do after Huw got out of
the bathtub. Cory and I had been bullshitting about the idea of
a collaboration so I emailed it to him and he emailed it right
back, with an extra thousand words tacked on the end. So I
extended it and bounced it at thim. Rinse, cycle, repeat until
there's a 22,000 word novella.
It's certainly not the first collaboration on the internet -- not
by decades -- but it maybe _is_ worth noting that Cory and I never
met in meatspace until after we'd sold it. (Must do it again some
time, but I suspect that right now we're both too busy writing
novels; I've got one to hand in in April and another to nail
down by December, and I know Cory's busy too.)
-- Charlie
Peter D. Tillman
Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <til...@aztec.asu.edu> declared:
>
> > Starts out as an unholy threeway with Ken MacLeod, Bruce Sterling, &
> > Vernor Vinge. Then, add Spinrad! Forward! Rucker! Drexler!
> > Post-Singularity millenial weirdness! Is this a new movement? In JS,
> > Stross & Doctorow are clearly the kitchen-sinkists... How many did I
> > miss, Charlie?
>
> Not sure; it wasn't deliberate, that much I remember.
>
On *your* end -- your partner-in-crime will have to speak to his bits...
Kinda makes it cooler that it wasn't deliberate, because, trust me,
these aren't subtle hommages [note 1]. Just adding another lamella to
the consensual alt-future that the 'serious' sfnal extrapolators are
building. One of the things that I really like to watch, as a 'serious'
reader of same.
Heh. I'm a little disappointed that you guys aren't going to build on
this very cool backstory, but who knows what might happen, eh?
You two should compare notes sometime with Michael Swanwick, re the
4-way round-robin that became "Green Fire" (Asimov's, 4-00). Ah, here's
a note from MS: "Yeah, it was great fun. Astonishingly so, given that
there were four collaborators." And a very cool story, too.
Gee, you'd think I could come up with some other term of praise than
"very cool", wouldn't you?
And I'm pleased to hear that "I Love Paree" is being reprinted. What a
cool story!
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Note 1) I hope it was clear that I was completely bowled over by the
story... Very cool.
--
"The trouble with predicting the future is that it is very hard."
-- Yogi Berra