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Downloads

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.

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Writer in Residence in 2010

February 1 to May 31 at the Merril Collection Public Library in Toronto

Due to the overwhelming response to the writer in residence programme, all events and activities are now full up.  You can contact Toronto Public Libraries for information about how to add your name to waiting lists for the upcoming workshops, however I will not be accepting any more manuscripts as I'm chock full!

I will continue to blog on the TPL website about writing as a process, an art, and a career.

 My Next Publication

Coming up on June 6, 2010, the Tor Books edition of METAtropolis will hit the stores.  This will be the third edition of this Hugo-nominated work, the first being the original audiobook and the second the limited print edition that came out of Subterranean Press last year.  You'll be able to find the Tor edition in all major bookstore chains and most specialty SF stores as well.

 

Metatropolis Tor edition

My OSCON '09 Talk

Here's the talk I gave at OSCON '09 (The O'Reilly Open Source conference, held in July 2009 in San Jose).  The talk has been very well received, garnering about ten times as many views as most of the other speakers (though of course for all I know, that could be due to people visiting it to laugh at my ideas).  Anyway, here it is:

Back to School for My Masters Degree

It's official:  over the next two years I'll be working towards garnering a Masters in Strategic Foresight from the Ontario College of Art and Design.  This will formalize my skills and experience in an area where I already do a good deal of work--foresight studies, also called futures study or just futurism.

Flying cars

 

I'm already a futurist, I suppose, though for me at least that term tends to conjure images of chrome-domed technophiles ranting about how we're all going to have flying cars in our driveways in ten years.  Technology foresight, which is what I specialize in, is less ivory-tower and more inclusive, however, because it involves the contribution of stakeholders in imagining both the scenarios and the probabilities attached to them.

 

I hasten to add that I won't be doing this work instead of my SF writing; I will be doing it in addition to writing.  I'm still deeply committed to my science fiction and to writing in all its forms.  What this degree program will do is give me more tools for my workshop, allowing me to approach the study of the future from more directions.  It's all good.

 
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Virga omnibus edition