My pal and sometime-co-author Karl Schroeder's new novel, "Permanence" is finally out. I had the good fortune to workshop this book over the course of a year or so, and it's wonderful. The book is set against a backdrop of copyright-maximialist galactic civilization in which all sensoria is mediated, and depending on which license fees you pay, you see and hear different parts of the real world (i.e., banners, facades, etc). Nanofabricated artefacts and genetic material is all copyrighted ad infinitum, so that rightsholder robber-barons extract royalties at light-speed-lagged removes. In the foreground is a cult whose mission is to prevent humanity from artificially evolving itself into a post-sapient species that builds spaceships the way beavers build dams. It's a corker. It's been a year since I read it and even now hardly a week goes by without it coming up in conversation.
(Thanks, Theresa!)
