The XPrize Foundation has sponsored a new, visionary time-travel anthology that you can read online--and contribute to!  It's called Seat 14C, and you can enter your own story to join myself and a stellar cast of SF greats as we explore the world twenty years in the future.

My own story's called The Urge To Jump, and it's about adventurers doing a High Altitude High Opening parachute jump onto the back of a mile-wide aerostat (high altitude balloon) in the South Pacific.  For the bounty... and a chance to build themselves a new home.

Come join us on the flight, there's one seat left.

You can enter to win a free copy of my newest book, Lockstep.  Goodreads and Tor Books are sponsoring the draw, which is open until February 25, 2014.  

Early buzz on Lockstep is very flattering (see this blogger's review, and this one).  I had a lot of fun writing this novel; like 2002's Permanence, it's something of an homage to the Andre Norton juveniles I grew up reading. 

One cool aspect of this particular draw is that what you'd be winning is an ARC--an Advance Reader's Copy of the novel.  These are generally the same as the hardcover edition on the inside, but paper-bound and usually without cover art.  Plain, intended for reviewers--and collectible.

So what have you got to lose?  The contest's open to anyone in the U.S. and Canada, and goes for another month.

Well, the "win a copy of Tor's gorgeous new edition of Metatropolis contest" is over, and the prize goes to Jim Rion, for alerting us to a dystopian nightmare that's actually being built over in Burma.  Now, I gotta admit, some of the other entries were weirder--flying blimp refugee housing for a flooded New York, for God's sake?  Thanks to Jon Hansen for that one.  And what about Arcosanti and Biosphere 2?  (Thanks, Neth Space!)  The obviously-his/her-real-name Potato gave us perhaps my favourite, which was the microwave indoor heating system (or Personal Pain Ray) and, well, that's just damned weird.  Millennially weird, actually.  

And yet... with a little twist of perspective, I could actually see most of these ideas being implemented.  The common thread in the designs I ultimately didn't pick was that they were largely motivated by genuinely reasonable concerns about function and efficiency, albeit usually hypertrophied compared to the rest of the body that usually goes into a good design.  Microwave heating as a way of saving 75% of heating costs... okay, I can sort of get that (though if I had to choose, I think I'd bury my house in sod before prying the door off my microwave oven).

I really wanted ideas that had at least reached the municipal planning stage, however--proposed, not just thought of.  Most of these wonderful plans have, alas, not been seriously taken up by any real municipality.  

It came down to sheer lunatic inventiveness vs. sinister Orwellian reality.  The other big contender was Shimizu Corporation, whose website contains not one, or two, but seven gobsmackingly wild visions of future urbanity.  In the end, it was the fact that Naypyidaw really exists that pushed it over the edge for me.  I mean, come on--a city built with extra-wide roads that can double as military runways?  A place where the military 'fortress' and government quarter are literally walled off from the rest of the city?  --Where not even the families of government workers are allowed to visit?  (You too could live in a colour-coded apartment block, whose roof colour can tell the air force exactly which units to precision bomb to take out entire sectors of the bureaucracy.)  Where key government officials and high-ranking military personnel live in a dedicated system of bunkers and tunnels 11 kilometers from the rest of the city; but there's waterslides and not one, but two golf courses for the happy citizens?

Ah, Naypyidaw.  It'll make a dandy theme park some day.

Incidentally, what stunned me was that nobody mentioned Dubai.  What the frack?  Was it too ordinary for you guys?  Did I miss the memo and is Dubai reasonable or something? Or just so obviously the elephant in the room that nobody felt it worth mentioning?  Not citing Dubai... now that's weird.

So, anyway--Jim, I'm just coordinating with John Scalzi about getting you your book.  And thanks for bringing just a little grim, dystopian magic into all our lives!

The new Tor edition of Metatropolis will be out in just a couple of days, and you can get it for free.  All you have to do is enter any of the five contests being held by myself and the four other authors on their blogs (John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, and Jay Lake).  Winners will receive free books!  

In my case, you need to reply in the comments below (you'll sadly have to sign up for my site first, an annoying restriction necessitated by the large amounts of spambot garbage I've been receiving in my comment threads).  Then, you need to describe--and hopefully link to--the most bizarre, weird-ass example of urban planning or urban renewal you've ever heard of.  It can be anything from Russia's scheme to light cities at night using giant orbiting mirrors, to nuclear-powered commuter trains.  But it has to have been really proposed at some point.

Contest closes on June 7th.  Ready... set... go!