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Lexicon: smart, sharp technothriller from Max "Jennifer Government" Barry

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:54:29 +0000

Max Barry's new technothriller Lexicon is a gripping conspiracy novel about a cabal of "poets" who have mastered the deep language of the human brain and can use it to boss the rest of us around. It's a pitch-perfect thriller, a jetpack of a plot that rocketed me from page one to page 400 in a single afternoon, and it kept me guessing right up to the end. Imagine Dan Brown written by someone a lot smarter and better at characterization and at hand-waving the places where the science shades into science fiction, and you've got something like Lexicon.

In particular, Lexicon captures a lot of the stuff that makes the myth of Neurolinguistic Programming so compelling -- the idea that smart people can figure out how to make others march in lockstep just by tricking their subconsciouses into thinking that that's what they wanted to do all along. And Barry carries through the power-fantasy to its inescapable end: a secretive, paranoid, power-maddened cabal that is its own worst enemy.

Full of surprises and grace notes, this is the kind of delightful thriller that's anything but a guilty pleasure, and just what you'd expect from the author of such great books as Jennifer Government and Machine Man.

Lexicon

Kickstarting a spellbook for Pathfinder RPG

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:06:04 +0000

Wade sez, "Wolfgang Baur, roleplaying game designer and publisher of the late, lamented Kobold Quarterly magazine (successor to Dragon) has launched the Deep Magic Kickstarter bringing 300 new spells to Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Deep Magic smashed through its $10k funding goal in six hours and less than a week later is about to hit $50k. Deep Magic contributors include Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood and Pathfinder creator Jason Bulmahn, along with an array of other award-winning game designers and developers."

$35 is the minimum pledge for your own copy (normal crowdfunding caveat applies: you may get nothing for your money, though this one looks like a good bet for completion, given its principals' publishing experience).

Deep Magic is the ultimate sourcebook for new and variant magic in any fantasy setting, offering a bare minimum of 112 full-color pages. They feature:
* At least 12 new schools and styles of magic, including blood magic, clockwork magic, diabolism, dragon magic, grudge magic, ink magic, ley line magic, star & shadow magic, and several more
* 12 magic colleges and academies, each home to a magical style or tradition
* More than 300 new spells, including new ones for every spellcasting class in the Pathfinder RPG
* New spellcasting archetypes and new mythic spells
* And much more!

Deep Magic: A Tome of New Spells for Pathfinder RPG (Thanks, Wade!)

The 'Geisters: spooky, scary novel

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:42:39 +0000

Horror writer David Nickle is a master of the creepy -- the reveal at the end of the horror story that lodges in your brain and revisits you in goosepimply moments of fear. I stole the idea of ambulatory thumbs in Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town from one of his short stories ("The Unshackling of Thumbs"), because once I read that story, the image just wouldn't get out of my head.

But with his new novel, The 'Geisters, Nickle manages to capture another of horror's delicious thrills: spookiness. From the first page, The 'Geisters exudes a hindbrain-teasing sense of lurking menace, the haunted-house creak of an impending apparition. It's a spectacular feeling, and Nickle tightrope-walks it for 300 too-short pages, building to a climax that's spooky, creepy and scary besides -- and all the moreso because of that long journey on the verge of fear.

Geisters is the story of Ann LeSage, a girl who manifests a violent and elusive poltergeist she calls the Insect. We meet Ann as she is about to get married to a lawyer named Michael Voors, who bemusedly resolves the cognitive dissonance of salt-shakers that move on their own without resorting to supernatural explanations. Ann knows better. She knows that the Insect has escaped from the mental prison she built for it after it killed her parents and turned her brother into a quadriplegic. As she and Michael depart for a lavish Caribbean honeymoon -- paid for by Michael's mentor, a rich winery owner -- the Insect manifests more frequently and in ways that grow ever more violent, culminating with their return flight making a disastrous emergency landing that kills her husband. That death sets her on a journey across America, hunted by people who seem to know the true nature of the poltergeists -- and who have a darkly erotic relationship with them.

The story is a white-knuckler from page one, and Nickle is a master of luring you into thinking that the supernatural can be rationalized and systemized, only to reveal, time and again, that the orderly patterns we try to make of the irrational are figments of our imagination. I was off-balance and more than a little scared throughout.

Nickle has posted the first chapter to his blog.

The book's also got its own power-ballad:

Kari Maaren wrote and performed this anthem for the book on her uke.

The 'Geisters

Edwardians doing bike tricks

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:00:49 +0000

The Guardian commemorates the reissue of Isabel Marks's 1901 classic "Fancy Cycling" by publishing a sweet gallery of Edwardian ladies and gents doing bike tricks: "Marvel as these tailored tricksters demonstrate how to pick up a handkerchief without dismounting, ride backwards while seated on the handlebar, and 'tilting at the ring'"

(Thanks, Jonathan!)

Kickstarting a set of black-light Alice in Wonderland posters

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:00:16 +0000

Noah sez, "What goes together better than Alice in Wonderland and black-light posters?! I'm excited to be a part of this cool project that just launched on Kickstarter. Eight artists have worked together to create a set of 16 original black-light reactive screen printed posters inspired by characters and scenes from the classic Lewis Carroll stories. The best part is that each of the posters actually transforms in surprising ways in their black-light lit state. Now we just need your help to make them a reality!" $25 gets you a small print, $55 gets you a big one, $400 gets you the whole set of 16.

Black Alice: a screen printed, black-light poster series (Thanks, Noah!)

Hollow spy-coins milled out of real currency

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:08:33 +0000

A company called "Covert Coins" mills hollow coins out of real currency and turns them into hidden, spook-tastic secret compartments. Reviews say that the coins are indistinguishable from undoctored items on casual inspection.

Micro SD Card Covert Spy Coin - Secret Compartment (Many Countries/Denominations) (via Oh Gizmo)

Carl Hiaasen's Bad Monkey

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:33:03 +0000

Rejoice! For Carl Hiaasen, author of the funniest crime novels in the business, bar none, has a new book out! Bad Monkey has just arrived on shelves and it is every bit as hilarious as you could hope -- I spent the weekend reading choice bits aloud to whomever I could grab, and giggling noisily to myself when no one was around. This is vintage Hiaasen, which is to say it is absurdist, gross, human, sexy, weird, and as Floridian as a styrofoam snowman despoiling the Everglades.

Summarizing Hiaasen's many plot-threads and twisty-turns is a mug's game, but here's his publisher's synopsis:

Andrew Yancy—late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office—has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it’s not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first—this being Hiaasen country—Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy’s new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey, who with hilarious aplomb earns his place among Carl Hiaasen’s greatest characters.

Which captures some of the spirit of the story, but what's missing is the fantastic satisfaction of reading a new Hiaasen, wherein the most baroque and evil villains and foils each get some form of karmic retribution that is both wildly unlikely and, in hindsight, inevitable. Hiaasen's a master of the revenge fantasy who makes the rest of us look like amateurs. And despite this -- or perhaps because of it -- he still writes some of the best, most likable antiheroes in the business, and Andrew Yancy is no exception. Lucky us, there's a new Hiaasen! Now, to begin the long, agonizing wait for the next one!

Bad Monkey

Previous Hiassen reviews:

* Star Island

* Basket Case

* Nature Girl

Topsy Turvy World: surreal kids' picture book, now out in the USA

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:15:36 +0000

Back in May, I reviewed Topsy Turvy World, a beautiful, wordless surreal picture book from London's Flying Eye. At the time, it was only available in the UK, but it's out in the USA as of today! Here's my original review:

TOPSY TURVY WORLD is one of the new titles from Flying Eye, the kids' imprint of London's wonderful NoBrow publishing. Like the rest of the line (recently reviewed titles include Welcome to Your Awesome Robot, Monsters and Legends and Akissi), Topsy Turvy World is brilliantly conceived, beautifully executed, and not quite like anything else in kids' publishing today.
Topsy Turvy World is a wordless collection of surreal paintings presented as two-page spreads. Though there's no story per se, the paintings do progress from the merely whimsical to the outright bizarre. The artist, Atak (a pseudonym for the German illustrator Hans-Georg Barber) manages to make things weirder and weirder without even hinting at horror, which is a great trick and makes this a perfect picture book for small kids like my daughter, who experienced unvarnished delight as we snuggled up at bedtime, working our way through all the strange and funny situations depicted on each page (the final spread is a real crescendo!).
The nice folks at Flying Eye were kind enough to supply some samples to go with this review -- check them out below the jump!

TOPSY TURVY WORLD [Flying Eye]

Topsy Turvy World [Amazon]

3D printed bowtie

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 02:46:57 +0000

This 3D printed bowtie ain't cheap ($115), but it's got a clever little fitting (it buttons straight onto your collar-button), and it also looks like a fun project to recreate with your local hackspace's 3D printer.

bow tie (via OhGizmo)

Hubsan X4 quadcopters: tiny cheap, powerful copter

Ben Laurie — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:00:15 +0000

The Hubsan X4 quadcopter is a tiny, cheap copter with enough power to do flips, enough smarts to stay level and pointing right, and enough tough to drop from 50 foot onto grass without damage. It flies for ten minutes or so and recharges from USB. The separately available spares package include copious spare blades, a spare shell and a spare battery.

It's cheap (under £30), includes a remote control and is an absolute blast to fly. It can handle quite a fresh wind and is fast enough that it's best fun outdoors, though it appears that people more skilled than I can also fly it indoors. Without hitting things.

BTW, important hint: connect the power when the copter is on a level surface. If you don't, it's impossible to fly.

Hubsan X4 H107 R/C Micro Quad Copter 2.4GHZ [Amazon UK]

The Hubsan X4 H107 Quadcopter Crash Pack [Amazon UK]

Hubsan X4 H107 R/C Micro Quad Copter 2.4GHZ [Amazon US]

The Hubsan X4 H107 Quadcopter Crash Pack [Amazon US]

Monsters and Legends: kids' monster book now in the USA!

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:08:30 +0000

Back in April, I reviewed Monsters and Legends, a wonderful illustrated kids' reference book from London's Flying Eye Books. At the time, it was only available in the UK, but now Americans can get it too! Here's my original review:

Monsters and Legends is part of the fabulous debut lineup of titles from Flying Eye, a kids' imprint spun out of London's NoBrow (they're the publishers of recently reviewed books like Welcome to Your Awesome Robot and Akissi). The book, written by Davide Cali and illustrated by Garbiella Giandelli, is a fascinating reference work for kids 7 and up about the curious origins of the monsters of the popular imagination. The book recounts the odd history of stories of mermaids, chupacabras, cyclopses, dragons, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptozoology favorites. It's a great balance between fascination with monsters and lore and a skeptical inquiry into how widespread beliefs can be overturned by evidence and rational inquire -- a real "magic of reality" book.

The illustrations in this book represent a range of engaging styles, and they bring it to life for even younger readers. My five year old and I spent several bedtimes on this, flipping through the pages, and stopping when a picture caught her eye. I had to interpret the text for her -- the language was often over her head -- but the stories absolutely grabbed her and it's become a family favorite.
As a one-time monster kid who's doing his best to raise another one, this one gets my unreserved stamp of approval.

MONSTERS AND LEGENDS [Flying Eye]

Monsters and Legends [Amazon]

Kickstarting an omnibus edition of the Digger webcomic

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:48:19 +0000

Carl sez, "Remember Digger, Ursula Vernon's Eisner award nominated/Hugo Award winning webcomic about a wombat searching for a way home? Publisher Sofa Wolf has launched a Kickstarter for an all-in-one omnibus edition. It's currently available in six individual volumes or free online, but this will put it all in one convenient book. Plus it's the first kickstarter to offer a wombat-sized pickaxe as a reward (in foam or metal)."

Digger Omnibus (Thanks, Carl!)

Akissi: kids' comic about a mischievous girl in Cote D'Ivoire [now in the USA!]

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:23:55 +0000

Back in April, I reviewed Akissi, a delightful kids' comic about a mischievous little girl in Cote D'Ivoire, translated from the original French. Back then, it was only available in the UK, but as of today, you can buy it in the USA, too! Here's my original review:

Akissi is a French-language comic about the adventures of a little West African girl, now available in English translation thanks to the astoundingly excellent Flying Eye, a new kids' imprint of London's NoBrow. It was created by Marguerite Abouet, whom you may know from Aya, a series of comics for adults set in Cote d'Ivoire, widely available and appreciated in English translation.
Akissi's adventures are both universal and absolutely particular to her milieu. My young daughter -- born and raised in London -- has never kept a pet monkey, had a tapeworm come out of her nose, or had to contend with an older brother who wouldn't take her pigeon hunting; but Akissi's struggles with authority, her close friendships, and her misunderstandings are immediately recognisable to my daughter and her friends when they come over, and I've read the book aloud to them a good half-dozen times since I brought it home last week. It's the perfect combination of gross-out humour, authority clashes, and general mischief to capture a kid's interest.

Akissi comprises seven short stories, each of which stands alone, and, as with all of the NoBrow titles, it is a beautiful package -- great binding, endpapers, paper stock, and spine -- suitable for both your own library and as a handsome gift.

Akissi [Amazon]

AKISSI [Flying Eye]

Walking Dead 18: a magnificent villain who makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mr Rogers

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:50:48 +0000

When the 17th Walking Dead collection came out last December, I called it "grim," and mentioned that Kirkman and co had introduced some new bad guys that made the Governor seem like a Smurf. Well, now Book 18: What Comes After is out, and the new badguy, a psycho named Negan, is back, and holy. frigging. hell. is he ever evil. Seriously. Hannibal Lector is a comforting Mister Rogers figure next to him. If you like the TV show and haven't read the comics, do. You can get the entire emotional rollercoaster punch of a whole season in one or two volumes you'll be able to inhale in about an hour. By the time you get to book 18, you're basically mainlining it, distilling it to pure granules and letting them dissolve under your eyelids. And book 18 is special, even by those standards.

The Walking Dead 18: What Comes After

Previous volumes

Blinkytape: kickstarting a smart strip of LEDs

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:07:37 +0000

Todd sez, "Check out this awesome LED strip lights controlled by a simple controller board. Matt Mets went through the Haxlr8r program and came out with this project, with the help of Marty McGuire and Max Henstell. Just a few days left to get in on it."

BlinkyTape is a one meter long, full-color light tape with 60 independent RGB LEDs controlled by our custom light processor. Power and communications are provided by a built-in micro-USB connector. An on-board button allows for simple interactions such as choosing between effects.
BlinkyTape is flexible, so you can easily integrate it into any shape your project needs. BlinkyTape also comes enclosed in weatherproof silicone, so it's suitable for outdoor use!

It's $50 minimum pledge for a meter of the tape (as with all Kickstarters: caveat emptor, you may get nothing).

BlinkyTape: The LED Strip Reinvented (Thanks, Todd)

Limited edition Oblique Strategies deck from Brian Eno

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:47:34 +0000

Brian Eno has released a limited-edition deck of his "Oblique Strategies" cards, for £60. Oblique Strategies is a legendary deck of creative aphorisms and provocations that will make you revisit your assumptions and find new ways through hard problems. I swear by them ("be the first person to not do a thing that no one else has ever thought of not doing before").

Limited to 500 only.
Numbered 1 - 500
Housed in an exclusive burgundy box
This limited set will include new cards which are unique to this set and will not appear anywhere else. Exclusive to www.enoshop.co.uk

OBLIQUE STRATEGIES (via The Awl)

Picture Day: wry, superb coming-of-age movie

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:40:49 +0000

Picture Day is one of the best movies I saw last year. It's Kate Melville's directorial film debut, but for those of us who've followed her career since she was the youngest-ever playwright-in-residence at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, it is the apotheosis of everything Melvillian -- witty, wry, insightful material about teen relationships, the dreadful and wonderful desire to experience adult life, and the fundamental bizarreness of being a teen who has the self-awareness to understand how reckless actions are self-destructive but can't seem to give them up.

Here's the official synopsis:

Forced to repeat her senior year of high school, Claire’s (Tatiana Maslany) reputation is sliding from bad-ass to bad joke. Armed with an acid tongue and shielded by ever-present headphones, Claire locks onto the only student clueless to her sordid rep: Henry (Spencer Van Wyck), a nerdy freshman she used to babysit. At night, Claire escapes to raucous concerts where she catches the eye of 33-year–old Jim (Steven McCarthy, frontman of The ElastoCitizens), a would–be rock star who feeds on young fans’ adoration. Jim leads her into an intoxicating world of hard-partying musicians, while at school, Claire takes Henry under her wing. She reinvents her dorky friend as the mysterious rebel, throwing Henry’s life into hilarious turmoil. As Claire dances across the surface of these relationships, she eventually learns hard lessons about the difference between sex, intimacy, and friendship.

Picture Day has won a string of awards since it debuted at last year's Toronto International Film Festival -- but it has been locked up in distribution wrangles since then. Finally, it's available on DVD and as a download in the USA and Canada at least.

I've known Kate since she was 15 and I was 17, and I've been admiring her work for more than 25 years. It is such a pleasure to be able to recommend her film to you and to share the secret of her wild talent with the rest of the world.

Picture Day [Amazon]

Picture Day [Official Site]

TWA's Idlewild lounge: Escher, eat your heart out

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 03:00:13 +0000

No, it's not a lost Escher print, it's a photo of Saarinen's long-lost TWA lounge at Idlewild, and you can buy it as a print:

Circa 1964. "Trans World Airlines Terminal. Idlewild Airport, Queens, New York." Acetate negative by Balthazar Korab (1926-2013), Hungarian-born architectural photographer who documented the work of Eero Saarinen.

TWA: 1964 (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Han-in-Carbonite-with-a-boner lightswitch cover

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 03:09:30 +0000

The Han Solo in Carbonite light-switch cover combines the 1980s-era Empire Strikes Back kitsch with 1960s era novelty "boner" decor -- yours for $40 from Etsy seller Wicked Studio.

Star Wars Han Solo in Carbonite Light Switch (via OhGizmo)

Prints of classic "The Land of Make Believe Map"

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:51:46 +0000

(click to embiggen)

Zack sez, "Photographer Allan Rosen-Ducat is reproducing 'The Land of Make Believe,' a popular illustrated map by Jaro Hess that combines more than 50 classic fairy tales, nursery rhymes and more that was highly popular around the time of the Great Depression. The company sells prints of the map, and recent advancements have let them print it on glass and other objects."

"The Land of Make Believe Map", A compilation of western society's most famous fairy tales. (Thanks, Zack!)

Deluxe hardcover of Watchmen

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:07:24 +0000

The new Deluxe Edition of Watchmen landed in my post-box today. It's a very well-made hardcover edition of one of the canonical modern graphic novels. Everyone should have at least one edition of Watchmen on the shelf, and this is a pretty nice one to have -- the classy, matte-finish dustjacket goes over a set of full-color boards with the traditional Watchmen cover-image. There's a couple dozen pages' worth of early sketches for the book, and a fascinating intro by illustrator Dave Gibbons. All told, a great package -- perfect for a gift, or to replace your tattered paperback.

Watchmen Deluxe Edition

Jewelry made from fragments of broken vintage china

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 16:47:31 +0000

Boodi Blu is a London jeweler who makes beautiful, clever pieces out of broken pieces of vintage and antique china, puzzled together with small metal fittings. I just saw them in person at a flea market stall and they're wonderful, the kind of thing a suicidal AI might piece together in the bittersweet denouement of a William Gibson novel.

Boodi Blu

3D printed, 28-geared cube gets motorized, additional awesome

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 31 May 2013 17:01:04 +0000

>
Alex sez, "You recently did a blog post of a 3D printed cube with 28 gears which was 3d printed fully assembled -- which I designed. However since this post, the cube has improved greatly, lubricated with a PTFE lubricant; I have also created a motor attachment to allow the geared cube to run autonomously.

Steampunk themed 28-Geared Cube (Thanks, Alex!)

Adventure Time title cards as art prints

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 31 May 2013 05:00:32 +0000

Nicole sez, "Fans of Adventure Time so look forward to seeing the gorgeous and imaginative artwork that appears at the top of each new episode in the title cards. Now, these beautiful designs featuring Finn, Jake, and the many off the wall inhabitants of the Land of Ooo are available as framable art prints from WeLoveFine.com. Eleven are available so far, including fan-favorite episodes 'The Creeps' and 'It Came From the Nightosphere'; all are 18 x 24, printed to order on high-quality ARTA paper and are $25 each. Some of the designs are also available as t-shirt variants, also $25 each."

Adventure Time Episode Title Card Designs! (Thanks, Nicole!)

Open hardware effects pedal on Kickstarter

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 31 May 2013 02:24:08 +0000

Martin sez, "Rebel Technology launches a Kickstarter to fund the OWL reprogrammable effects pedal: an open hardware, open source effects stompbox with a potentially unlimited library of effects written in C++ and powered by a powerful ARM Cortex M4 processor. It allows musicians to load any available effect or effect chain from their computer onto the pedal. Martin, Tom and Giom, the engineers behind the project, met each other at the London Hackspace in Hoxton. They all come from different backgrounds: Tom is a sound engineer and university lecturer, Giom a DSP engineer and musician, and Martin a software and hardware engineer. They have a shared passion for audio signal processing and hacking."

It's £165 and up to get your own fully assembled pedal (assuming they ship, as with all Kickstarters, caveat emptor).

OWL Programmable Effects Pedal

Spirit Level documentary: how economic inequality is bad for the world

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 30 May 2013 19:52:28 +0000

Here's a 2-minute preview of "The Spirit Level," a documentary based on the the bestselling book about the way that income equality is better for society, and how 30 years of economic policy has made everything much, much worse. The doc is funded by a successful Kickstarter, but they're still looking for pre-orders.

SpiritLevelDoc

Kickstarting an "Elves and Orcs" deck of playing cards

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 30 May 2013 18:33:27 +0000

Nat Iwata sez, "I'm an author/illustrator and video game artist. I'm running a Kickstarter campaign for a deck of illustrated Elves (red suits) & Orcs (black suits) Bicycle brand playing cards. Last year I wrote and illustrated The Steampunk Alphabet and then later funded a deck of Steampunk Cthulhu Bicycle cards."

Elves & Orcs Bicycle Playing Card Deck (Thanks, Nat!)

Shambling Guide to New York City

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 28 May 2013 13:00:47 +0000

Mur Lafferty is one of the worst-kept secrets in science fiction and fantasy publishing. "Secret" in that her fiction has not been widely published (until now). "Worst-kept" in that she has been such a force of nature -- the podcaster's podcaster, author of a huge corpus of excellent self-published work, and a skilled editor currently running Escape Pod -- that anyone who's been paying attention has known that there were great things coming from her.

Great things have come from her. The Shambling Guide to New York City is the first volume in a new series of books about Zoe Norris, a book editor who stumbles into a job editing a line of travel guides for monsters, demons, golem-makers, sprites, death-gods and other supernatural members of the coterie, a hidden-in-plain-sight secret society of the supernatural.

The volume opens with a desperate, out-of-work Zoe prowling the streets of New York, looking for a publishing job -- any publishing job. She finds herself chasing down a mysterious advertisement for an editor for Underground Press, which turns out to be the hobby-business of an ancient vampire with a modern idea. Phil, the owner, wants to produce the first-ever line of tour-guides for travelling coterie. And it just so happens that Zoe's last job was editing a successful line of (human) travel guides, a gig she excelled at and would have held still save for her philandering boss, who neglected to mention that he was married (to a psycho police chief!) before he seduced her.

After being rebuffed, Zoe bulls her way into the job, only to discover that she has bitten off more than she can chew -- or rather, that several monsters are vying for chance to bite off a rather large chunk of her. Chief among them is a sleazy incubus who is fixated on having sex with her and feeding off her sexual energy (workplace harassment is complicated in the coterie).

From this, the story is off and running, and it never pauses for breath -- there's love, war, humor and a lot of heart, and by the time it's done, you know exactly why so many writers have been buzzing about Mur Lafferty for so many years. It's as strong a debut as I can remember reading, and I can't wait for the follow-on volumes.

The Shambling Guide to New York City

Pendants carved out of old British coinage

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 27 May 2013 12:51:28 +0000

London's Thornhill Jewellery takes old British coinage and ~~laser-cuts~~ carves sweet/funny/silly designs into them. You can also get them made to order from the year of your choosing (to celebrate a birthday, for example). I saw several of these in person Sunday at Spitalfields Market and they're just great.

Thornhill Jewellery / coins

Sheldon Cooper mask

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 26 May 2013 21:44:20 +0000

This is a Sheldon Cooper mask. It makes you look like a character from the Big Bang Theory. It scares and excites me. That is all.

The Big Bang Theory- Sheldon's Mask (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)