hard deadlines

Hypertext or print, it's all about science fiction.

In progress

My 2009 National Novel Writing Month project.

Fist of the Ape
In an alternate WWII, a US weapons expert and his code-talking sidekick pair up with a Russian spy to track down a possible Nazi atomic bomb.

Prologue:

Manhattan, July 28, 1945, 9:40am
People on the streets recalled hearing the airplane first; a big Army bomber from the sound of it, coming in from the East River. They might have looked up, but couldn't even see the tops of buildings in the drifting cloud deck. The plane was clearly over the city, they remembered, and far too low.

In the Empire State Building, the Saturday shift of the Catholic War Relief Board was beginning their work day. Perhaps they caught a rumble of approaching engines; there might have been time for a glance out the window.

Then the bomber emerged from the fog and struck head-on.

Twenty tons of airplane plowed through the limestone facade and exploded into the building; the B-25 came apart in a fireball, sending a hailstorm of wreckage tearing through offices. The workers, a typical wartime mix of old men, teenagers, and nuns, were killed at their desks, crushed or incinerated.

The left engine penetrated the elevator core, sheared cables, and plummeted to the basement.

One heavy chunk of wreckage passed entirely through the 79th floor, blowing an exit wound in the south wall and plunging across 33rd street to bury itself in the top floor of a warehouse.

When the Office of Strategic Service agents arrived, they had no time to listen to witnesses babbling excitedly to the cops, and they had only the briefest glance for the smoking hole in the side of the skyscraper. None of that was important. The debris across the street was all that that was of interest to them.

Explore the backlist...

(Nothing But) Flowers
Actually, this one is not so much a story as an occasional fiction, written for a very specific audience, halfway between homage and pastiche and larded with sly winks and intertextual references. My plan after using it for its intended purpose was to make only the most cursory attempt at selling it (as one is obligated to, if one follows Heinlen's Five Rules) and then cc-license it, which is the only appropriate thing to do with something written as a wedding present for Cory Doctorow and Alice Taylor.

You can read it online or download as rich text here.

What? You haven't read Cory Doctorow's work? Don't waste another minute here. Go download some of his amazing stories.

(Nothing But) Flowers by John G. McDaid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.torvex.com.

Keyboard Practice...

Visit F&SF on-line for print and electronic options.

The January 2005 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction featured a novelette, Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with two Manuals. Set in a near-future with ubiquitous podcasting, the story chronicles a classical piano competition and borrows structural elements from from Bach's Goldberg Variations and American Idol. Oh, and there's an artificially intelligent piano, a canon, an NTSB transcript, and maybe — just maybe — a ghost.

This story was a finalst for the Sturgeon Award, appeared on the 2005 preliminary Nebula® ballot, and was a Locus Magazine recommended read. Read it online here.

Prefer audiobooks? You can now download it here. (It's a novelette, so even with good encoding, this two-hour clip is still about 60mb.)

You can read an interview with me on SciFiChannel.com: 'Keyboard' Channels Bach.

The Ashbazu Effect

Check it out at Amazon.com

A short story called The Ashbazu Effect appeared in the DAW Books anthology ReVisions in August, 2004. Edited by Julie Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel, ReVisions is a collection of alternate histories of technology, including stories by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross, Mike Resnick, and Peter Watts.

Drawing on the work of media theorists Marshall McLuhan, Robert Logan, and Elizabeth Eisenstein, Ashbazu explores what might have happened if the printing press were invented somewhat earlier than 1456.

Read it here.

Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse
One of the early hypertext novels published by Eastgate Systems, and reviewed in the New York Times, this work is currently available only for the Macintosh. However, work is progressing on an updated, Web-centric 2.0 version.
Read more »

Jigoku no mokushiroku
Winner of the 1996 Theodore Sturgeon Award for best sf short story, Jigoku has been translated into several languages. The title, which loosely means "the symbolic revelation of the Apocalyse" was suggested by the Japanese movie poster for Apocalypse Now

Read it here.

The Planes, a decoupled monomeric hypernarrative
Originally written as a series of lexia to be included in a collaborative hypertext in a special issue of the journal Writing On the Edge, the story is available on-line in a compilation of early hyperfictions.
Check it out in The New Media Reader »