Procedural-code-as-magic trilogy goes Creative Commons

Mayer Brenner sez,

A four-volume fantasy series I wrote (The Dance of Gods) was published by DAW between 1987 and 1992. While the books acquired a small group of ardent devotees, they did not, shall we say, distinguish themselves in the marketplace. The books themselves, however, were in many respects more suited to how the world of fantasy has evolved today than the world they faced on initial publication. My hope now is to land them some fresh attention that may, with luck, get them back into print. I've been posting the books on my website where I'm making them available under Creative Content license as a free download. Since Cory, in particular, has posted a number of BoingBoing items on published SFF writers taking this same approach (e.g. Lew Shiner), I'm hoping my venture may warrant your notice as well.

The stories take an approach to magic more suited to engineers or programmers than mystics; more procedure-based than object-oriented, perhaps, but communing with nature is usually the last thing on these practitioners' minds. For that matter, I'm not sure the combination of magic-code hackers, molecular nanotech, and network-mediated consensual reality of the gods is something that could ever be summarized on a back-of-the-book blurb…

One of the most recent blurbs they've received, however, is:

"Ya gotta love a series with a hero named 'Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable'. READ THIS SERIES, shouts your FAQmaker, it's fast and furious, and fun, and I want the author to make enough money that he keeps writing fantasies."
– Amy Sheldon, The Recommended Fantasy Author List

Link

(Thanks, Mayer!)