I got that for Christmas. It was fun and a little addictive (and catered to my minor Disneyland obsession). His idea for 'whuffie' was new, but aside from being set in Disneyworld, the rest wasn't particularly original - hibernation, body modification, infinite lifespan, anarchy, etc have all been done a hundred times before. Also, the writing didn't quite match up to Neal Stephenson's constant deadpan wit.

On the other hand, Cory Doctorow's blog is always interesting, and I've been reading it for years.

True dat. I guess the offhand reference to Hiro Protagonist and Sushi K set my mind a-reeling. :~) Thanks for the link - I've come across his blog a couple of times before, but I hadn't made the connection. :~)

I just started reading that online too. It began with coming across a mention of whuffie on someone's blog and then discovering that everyone was talking about it. So i figured i had to read the original source.

I got the link (and first heard of whuffie) from Lessig's blog, myself.

I really liked snowcrash. But lately I've been focussing on getting audio books instead of the the written version - mostly because I often need to multitask. Hope D&O is available on un-abridged audiobook! I used to work at Disneyland in high school. The motto backstage was We create happiness. Pretty scary place. Lets just say that the job you get is proportional to how close you come to Walt's idea of "what stereotype should do what job"... Very 1940s I suppose.

Has anyone read Distraction by Bruce Sterling? What did they think of it? I'm also currently reading the English translation of Papadimitrious's fiction book "Turing: A romance about computation." It's pretty amusing.


- Burn0ut

I can't find any references to an audio copy, but if you download the text file and a text reader, you can make your own (albiet somewhat stilted) audiobook.

I just got news that a novella of Doctorow's has been nominated for a Nebula award.