The other stories are quite good as well, and represent a who’s who of writers — Ellen Klages, Alastair Reynolds, Nancy Kress being just three of the thirteen represented in the collection. Klages’ writing in particular sits on the boundary of real and imagined, present and potential future; her inclusion makes the overall narrative that much more rich and made me go looking for my copy of her Portable Childhoods.

At about $1.50 per story “Life on Mars: The New Frontier” is rich in value and variety.

Rather than a linear chronology, Bruford takes a simple idea – What do musicians do during the day, or How hard is it to play the drums – and turns it into a well-researched, thoughtful essay. The writing is intensely British, as is the humor (I think it’s British humor), and he doesn’t throw anyone under the tour bus. That’s the good news. The less happy side is that Bruford is a tortured artist; much of the book deals with his insecurities about his talent, his musicianship, and his creativity. In Neil Peart’s Road Show, you read about on-the-job concerns that are particular to touring musicians but not all that hard to believe: slightly dangerous but over-enthusiastic fans or missed cues within imperfect performances. Peart is a drummer who enjoys drumming and lovingly refers to his bandmates as “the guys from the office;” Bruford’s book left me feeling that he approached his music like a semi-regular trip to a moveable office. By Chapter 19, Bruford’s drums are Dilbert’s cubicle, equipped with ride cymbals and a sense of dread. Bruford relates his appearance on Peart’s “Burning for Buddy” tribute with the sense that he couldn’t wait for his two hours of big band time to hit the shout chorus.

It’s a book worth reading, espececially if you like prog rock and the Canterbury centered groups (Egg, Gong, Hatfield and the North) or ever wondered what Robert Fripp is like as a band mate. You’ll listen to “Close to the Edge” with new appreciation for how it was written and recorded, and wonder why Bruford can’t be equally amazed at his own musical accomplishments.

Better than just buying the book, go to the Books of Wonder event this Thursday, June 9th, in New York, to hear, meet and see Black, Kushner and Doctorow and a few others share parts of their stories and sign books. There are frighteningly good cupcakes co-located at Books of Wonder. If you know me, you know I’m 14% cupcakes by volume (22% by mass) and I do not give out cupcake huzzahs lightly.

But back to Bordertown, and in particular Doctorow’s Shannon’s Law [mild spoilers follow]. The title refers to an information processing theorem developed by Claude Shannon, the person responsible for making “binary digit” into the portmanteau we lovingly know as “bit”. Shannon’s Law measures the maximum information content – the bit rate – of a noisy channel. Bordertown is, as you learn in the collection introduction, a very noisy and sometimes unidirectional channel between human and mystical worlds. Doctorow’s story explores an attempt to reduce the entropy of Bordertown through packet flow, and how the information content of various channels is modulated by uncertainty, art, love, and understanding (or lack of it).

As soon as I was done reading it, I thought of my good friend Tom, and how he once said love is not logical; there is no algorithm or computation to see where and how you like what you like. Tom figured out the artful side of his love life at the same time he sailed through computational complexity classes that left me stumped, creating proofs that were as simultaneously elegant and complex as his Dead tapes that provided the soundtrack to the work. Just as there is no accounting for taste, there is no computational accounting for love, art, or the beauty that links the two.

Head-scratching context: What if the conclusion of the story is really a statement about the separability of logical and personal (or illogical); of computation and art? On the other hand, what if it’s primarily a love story, and it ends as it does so that love cannot be informed, even when encumbered by the exogenous (but weak and random) forces of magic?

John Scalzi is definitely one of my favorite sci-fi authors. While I enjoy books that leaving me thinking, head-scratching, pondering serious questions and sometimes collapsing all of those mental states around a quantum mechanics problem centered in the harder sci-fi, Scalzi’s books are uniquely hopeful. I wouldn’t go so far as to call his writing happy because I think that makes potential readers somehow discount his ability to tell a thought-provoking story.

Fuzzy Nation pits man versus The Man in a money or morality mining pit story. An independent prospector on a remote planet discovers a vein of gemstones that will make him wealthier than several corporations. He also discovers the “fuzzys” – cat-like aboriginal creatures who appear to be sentient. If the fuzzys are people, his claim is worthless; if the fuzzies are merely animals then he only has to maintain his (fighting) arm’s length relationship with the mining company that controls the planet. Scalzi’s story unfolds in a way that makes you question every slippery moral slope, and the value you place on selling your moral judgements about people, places and things.

As I read, I found myself thinking about aggression diamonds, conflict-free tantalum, and the early days of South Africa’s precious metals mines — all cases where the human costs were not nearly as precious as the materials extracted. I’m not the only one fascinated by Scalzi’s latest, as the book has hit the NY Times bestseller list. Reading it was the best two nights of this week.

Lots of observations:

Being sandwiched between two famous people isn’t good for you. My first thought was “Wow, we’re in between the Topatoco tables and Rica Takashima” and that the overflow traffic would browse our wares. The overflow traffic obscured our line of sight. But it was equally amazing to be next to Kate Beaton and Rica all weekend – they are gracious, humble, and completely tolerant of our crap spilling all over the place.

Rica writes yuri (“forbidden girl love”, as a loose Japanese translation, “sexual identity” as a stronger English version). Not sure that everyone who was browsing her half of the table quite grasped that at first, but I’m hoping that anyone who bought her comics went from uncomfortable to understanding. As my friend Jim says “Art should make you uncomfortable” – but that’s just the first step in developing an appreciation for it. Rica also donated all of her proceeds to support Japanese tsunami disaster relief. She and her crew were really outstanding table-mates.

I’m surprised, but not really, how many artists are shy. Erik sometimes says to me that I’m the “people person” in our little operation, and if I think about the artists I’ve gotten to know, they are (mostly) a more introverted bunch. Talking to a few thousand people, doing inscriptions and drawings on the fly, even having to sneak out for food and coffee without a breadcrumb trail of fan boys and girls therefore is much harder than for someone like me who is used to sales, shaking hands, and drawing in traffic. I have a significantly deeper appreciation for show exhibitors who cross outside their own comfort zones to help promote their work (and I’ve added to the list of retirement projects – promotion of independent artists).

I didn’t get to walk around and shop as much as I did as an attendee, and I’ll have to make up the spending deficit in post production. I did, however, get one of Christiann MacAuley’s Steampunk Mr. Peanut t-shirts. Third year in a row I’ve bought something from her. She’s funny.

There’s a collegial spirit at the show that is completely different from technology trade shows. Effectively, everyone is competing for the same eyeballs, the same dollars, the same table traffic. I heard several parents say “Pick one thing” (another side note/rant – when it comes to books, art, or music, why would you ever limit your kids’ consumption? Exposure to variety is good, within budget and reason). Other exhibitors traded books and prints with us, and were happy to talk “shop.” It’s not unexpected, but it’s also a strong statement about the overall feel of MoCCA – it’s independent artists building brands and gaining visibility, not pure commercial interests.

I had the pleasure of meeting SP Burke, the creator of “Oh, Goodie” and a fellow Rush fan. Saw one of his prints of the other Holy Trinity and laughed out loud, we did the instant bonding-over-Lerxst thing, and I offered him a spare ticket for the Rush show last night at the Garden. Yes, he didn’t know Rush was in town, and yes, we had a great time at the show. If only he knew how prophetic his “Working Man” comic (day before MoCCA started) would be [ed note for the uninitiated: Rush finished the show with "Working Man"]

For me the hardest part was changing my mindset between Saturday and Sunday. My expectation on Saturday was that we’d sell a lot of shirts and comics, and I’ve had to worry about walking through New York with a carnie roll of bills. We didn’t even cover our pro-rated costs on Saturday. But another artist told me “I’m happy if I make cab fare from the airport home” I felt better, and once again remembered the goal is to build readership. So we started giving away the black and white comics (total cost to print being a fraction of our outlay) and suddenly we had traffic. Best part of the day was someone leafing through Issue #1 and asking how Erik achieved one of the stippling effects. Close second – Bill Plympton himself picked up a copy, and then he stopped to talk comics with Erik on the show floor.

Final random thought: For years I’ve wondered if the way we teach history and literature (English) is outdated. When we were stuck with a hierarchy of writing forms – letters, diaries, memoirs, journals and books – it made perfect sense to use prose as a way to analyze and convey meaning. But face it – (almost) everyone likes “West Side Story” more than “Romeo and Juliet”. It’s funnier, it has better music and it’s a more contemporary treatment of star crossed lovers. I’ve seen my own kids get to use alternative media to explore the language arts: blogs written from the perspective of Holden Caufield, or a mockup of a character’s Facebook page. Why not? The goal is to teach analysis, critical thinking and to discover thematic elements, and you can do that through any number of expressive vehicles. Put another way: Kate Beaton should teach history through comics, because more people would grok Santayana’s quotes about remembering the past.

Strange and varied as the book is as a whole, it’s also that good as a whole. A mix of novellas and very short stories, covering any number of supposed genres, it’s a book that gives you pause and makes you think. It’s filled with little self-deprecating and self-referential asides that are mentally fecund and jocund (how’s that for tail-alliteration and recursive stylistic reference, complete with LISP annotation?)

I discovered Rosenbaum through his collaboration with Cory Doctorow on their “True Names” interpretation, which hurt my brain so much I read it twice. The actual prompting to buy Ant King, though, came from the end papers in my hand-bound edition of Doctorow’s With A Little Help – notes from the Ant King manuscript. More recursion.

Advertisement and diversion: If you can spent close to $300 on a book, and you look at it as something you’ll treasure and share and show off the way you would a lithograph or small scultpure or something your kids made you for your 40th birthday, buy a copy for yourself. I once spent more than $200 on a one-of-an-edition-of-ten hockey card because it captured a moment in time that I cherish. I justified that expense ex post facto through my interpretation of Cory’s story Craphound, used again to rationalize spending fifteen times the street price for a book, because it’s a unique member of a small set.

All of the pictures are clickable for full-size, graphic detail images, if you’re into book packaging porn.

I’ve been following Cory’s decision tree about this book, and his desire to dabble in self-publishing, with more than usual interest. Granted, I’m a huge fan-boy (for all senses of “huge”), and I’ve been looking at self-publishing everything from short stories that consumed this summer’s writing cycles to the first issue of the Amphibimen Comics. The back story only generated further and deeper interest in the front story, brought to its climax when I picked up the following box (one mailing day before Christmas) at the post office:

The box is hand-cut, hand-lettered and bears some re-used and re-purposed signs of Cory’s previous stints with the EFF. Peeking through the open end cap of the outer box I spied the burlap coffee sack that wrapped my treasure. This is high-end book lingerie – sneaking a glimpse of what lies inside only builds anticipation for unwrapping it further. I’m a boy for all senses of boy, too.

My first thought, like any kid with a wrapped present in hand, was to tear open the packaging. However, the burlap sack is just wonderful. “Fondled” is too strong; I slowly unrolled the sack ensconcing my book, stopping to take pictures and note the defects in the burlap, the dyes and paints announcing its provenance, and to wipe up the floatsam left behind on my desk. I’ll never look at Amazon’s shrink wrap or packing peanuts with only minor disdain again. This was a labor of love. I saved the burlap sack for reasons that will (I hope) become clear when we finally move out of this house and I have to clean up my office.

What’s inside? Goodness, oh goodness. And a surprise.

Extracted from its cross-Atlantic trip marsupial love-wrap was one tissue-wrapped book, sealed with stickers that themselves tell a story. The Charles Darwin posse sticker is a direct Shep Fairey tribute (Fairey being the genius behind, or in front of, “Andre The Giant Has A Posse” and the Obama “Hope” poster). The other two bits of sealing wax are an Alcatraz inmate warning sign and Cory’s waiver of bogus agreements. Maybe I was too early in the morning coffee cycle, but the dichotomy struck me as a bit of performance art: Science, fair use, over-regulation and over-zealousness. You figure out which adjectives go with which stickers. Or maybe I was reading too much into it before reading any of it.

Revealed beneath layers of tissue: Randall Munroe’s xkcd impression of Cory, having just landed his high-altitude blogging platform balloon. Rip, rip, tear, tear, enough of being gentle and caressing.

I don’t know if my edition was hand-selected (Snowman = 8 = Willie Stargell = long standing sports identity) or just serendipity. It is mine, boldly marked where no other edition can go. The spine embossing is deep. When you pick the book up, that negative space creates a sense of heft and gravitas. The only feeling that comes close is gently sliding a book from an old library shelf, opening it to find it’s a hundred year old first edition, then closing it to think for a moment about the others who might have held that same spine before you. That feeling is what led me to spend most of the winter months of my Princeton junior year in the Colonial Club library, having discovered the collection of historical books along the south windows. Some people enjoy the first sip of a red wine, or the feel of a new leather bag; I get equivalent sensory stimulation from a well-bound book.

The final surprise awaits inside the front and back covers. Cory promised a bit of “paper ephemera”; things that his friends had donated to him from their private or professional lives that he hand-glued into each copy. I hit the Benjamin Rosenbaum jackpot; notes from a talk at WisCon (the leading feminist literature con) and an uncorrected proof page from The Ant King (which, of course, I had to buy immediately so I can make the physical association). Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory collaborated on True Names, their re-interpreted tribute to the same-titled Vernor Vinge work.

There it is – unwrapped, exposed, ready to be displayed with pride, taken down at regular intervals to be shown off to family and friends, or just held at the end of a long day when a good book literally (in every sense) balances out everything else. I’m going to read the book, but I’ve ordered the paperback print-on-demand lulu.com edition for that purpose. As the parodied Jewish aunts say, while stuffing the occasional danish into their handbags, “this one is for later.”

One day my grandchildren will look at this hand-made work of art and literature, staring at the black storage device embedded in the cover with the same incredulity with which my kids regard 8-track tapes. One of those two book formats will survive into the next generation of people and technology, and I consider myself lucky to have an example rich in the detail that turns ephemera into someone else’s personal history with a touch of nostalgia.

He was, quite simply, one of the best role models and mentors anyone could have had. He made things simple but not too simple. He accomplished goals that conflated personalities, egos, and dollar volumes that would have defeated others out of hand. A senior managing director at a (now defunct) investment bank, George never let that title or position interfere with his sense of self. Laughing at the little perks like private elevators never precluded sharing those things, even with complete outsiders like me.

One of the things I believe he was most proud of was taking his kids and some of their friends to a concert in the UK; it was the kind of event that let him be generous and rock out all at the same time. At his funeral, one of his kids passed out guitar picks that read “Geo loved to boogie” on the flip side. If playing acoustic guitar duets with his brother would have enabled him to take trips on the Concorde, I think he would have chosen that as a career. He was an insanely good investment banker, but never lost sight of his true loves: family, guitar, and the great outdoors on his ranch.

His priorizations set excellent examples for me as I’ve made other career decisions. George wanted to be known as a rancher first and a banker second. When I tell people he was the absolute nicest guy ever to work on Wall Street, I’m not kidding. I think he’d have been horrified at what happened between 2006-2008.

No matter how busy he or his trading floor were, he always, always had time to talk, to offer advice, and to do so in a way such that you thought you were the center of the known universe for a short while. My friend Bill remarks that good radio personalities make you feel they’re sitting in your living room talking to just you; George accomplished that no matter the context.

His view of any problem was resoundingly practical. When we were working on a recovery problem involving trades that might have been lost, and were getting neck deep in some pretty nasty technical issues, he finally said “if that happens, tell the users to pick up the phone and call for help from a person.” It was such an obvious, simple answer that we were ignoring by attempting to automate it to death. That observation probably saved 3 months on the project.

George was passionate about his work and his people. Even if you made mistakes, he wanted to help you improve, not just unload on you. You can also tell quite a bit about an executive by the relationship he or she shares with their administrator, and in his case, the admiration was mutual. Working with him was invigorating; he did, as my friend Pete points out, create a lot of positive space.

There were several days when he’d call me and start the conversation with “I’m freaking out” which usually meant we had some engineers speaking the mamalushen of software engineering and not banking, and it was time to get simple and straighten those issues out. But think about how many people can say those words without fear of showing weakness, let alone with that hint of mischief that made even the most difficult situations tenable. It wasn’t ever weakness; it was good-natured honesty.

Despite working with him for shy of two years, George had a large impact on my career and my view of problem solving with both technology and people. March will mark the 10th anniversary of his passing, and to this day, I do a double-take when I see a picture of Trey Anastasio of Phish (who bears a striking resemblance to George in his day), half-hoping to see a caption with a different name. Through what he left those of us fortunate enough to know him, George still boogies on.

Quick summary: An independently published collection of short stories called Machine of Death is attempting to be an Amazon best-selling by clumping purchases into one day (that would be today, October 26). You can follow along on the MOD Facebook Event or by clicking through to Amazon and tracking the book’s flight up the popularity charts. You should buy the book, because it supports independent writers, and it sends a very clear message that something is foul in the publishing kingdom.

Read the MOD backstory here.

It’s working. MOD is (as of 8:30 am Eastern) the #1 Science Fiction Anthologies category, and a whopping #12 in all books. It’s not New York Times bestseller volume (yet), but it’s enough to land a one-day spot in the top slots which generates all sorts of wonderful second and third derivative network effects. Like unaffiliated people (me) blogging about it (here) to help the one-day event achieve a low damping factor (mixed physics metaphor) and a longer sales runway (weak business metaphor).

The concentrated sales effort works for a few reasons. It only takes a few hundred copies to make something a best seller for one day on Amazon. Even sales of one copy can move a book several hundred thousand places up the ranking list, although going from #345,878 to #126,879 is rarely cocktail party conversation (“Why yes, Jared, my book charted in the top quartile of Amazon’s titles this week.” ) It works because people discover new content through referrals – I tend to like what Jeph Jacques likes and if he recommends it, I’m willing to spend $9 to find out more. And finally, it works because the MOD effort in particular is leveraging the right aspects of social media – an event, an idea, a cause, and the right motivators – it answers the “What’s in it for me?” and “Why do I care?” questions head on.

What’s in it for me is that I get book that I would have likely overlooked because it would have been mis-filed or not visible in a real world bookstore, or because I never would have found it through Amazon’s referral engine. I love finding new writers and new ideas. I care because I like underdogs to win. I like to see starving artists rewarded. I love it when the tools of advertising get turned on their heads and actually create new routes to market. Erika Napoletano claims that puppies die when you game the system, but that’s only for self-promotion. When you use the system to create value more broadly, I believe that’s called capitalism.

The publishing business is seriously in the toilet. Best selling authors still move a good fraction of a million books per title, but those books that sit in the back rows of the audience, somewhere between Amazon book ranking #10,000 and #RFB (really freakin’ big, which is also my shirt size) are selling probably one-fifth of what they did a decade ago, especially in the technical book market. If you’re using a major publisher, that one-fifth slice coupled with your royalty rate means you’re lucky if you see $100 a month if you’re under the long tail. Self-published books get a much bigger chunk of that retail pie, so it’s rent money. Part of the volume deficit is search-related, part of it is the incredible sclerosis of the brick and mortar booksellers, and part of it is that publishing of any sort – music, movies, books – is now as much about the long-tail effects for any author who isn’t a household name.

Net net: buy the book. Read it. Share your story online, write a review, tell a friend. Be the long tail that wags the publishing dog.

[Update at 12:20 PM EDT] I’m both in awe and chuckling with that “I knew it all along” smugness. MOD is now the second-best selling book of the day at Amazon, just behind Keith Richards’ book (now there’s irony in juxtaposition). Speaks volumes about the power of recommendation, the relative depth of our social graphs, and the fact that everyone loves a good story, sci-fi or just real-world publishing drama.

I didn’t win the fan fic contest, but it was fun.

The winners, along with stories by Scalzi, Wheaton and others (and some insane stuff like a song, an interview with Scalzi, and sci-fi poetry) are now published in Clash of the Geeks. This is beyond awesome in so many ways: it’s free, it’s DRM-free, it’s instantly downloadable, and it’s free. But it’s also meta-awesome, because if you want to download the book, you really should also make a contribution to the Lupus Alliance of America, per the directions and incentives on the right sidebar; the whole project started as a fund raising idea and if you are inclined to participate in the “free as in beer” part of the deal you should support efforts for some “free as in freedom” for those suffering from lupus.