It plays in the Little Brother/Homeland universe, and is, so is the consensus, set after the latter.
I'm currently trying to remember where I've come across some (only parts) of this before - it must be either something Cory read at some event or convention, or I must have read an extract of this before; but either way memory fails me at the moment.
Never mind my failing recollection, though, I'd suggest you go and read this for yourself.
Most of the cosmic code is Dark Energy and Dark Matter. The stuff we foolishly call ‘reality’ is the cute friendly part with the kid-colored don’t-be-evil Google graphics.
This time it's a short story called, imaginatively, Beyond the Coming Age of Networked Matter, and is written by Bruce Sterling, although the density of hype-words, as well as the overall geeky overdrive in the story made me feel like I was reading a Cory Doctorow story (but no, he has his own entry in the anthology), or maybe something by Lavie Tidhar.
“I read the forbidden book,” said Crawferd. “It’s not Steve Wolfram’s fault that the universe is a computationally equivalent Turing Machine that’s ninety-six percent hideous darkness.
Heady stuff, either way, a head-rush of a story. Very much recommended.
The illustration on the right is, yet again, by Daniel Martin Diaz (click through for the gorgeous larger version)
Tor.com has a rather magnificent story by Ben Burgis, called Contains Multitudes (yes, that's a Walt Whitman quote) online for your delectation.
It plays in a world where humanity fought, and nearly (?) lost a war with a cosmic invader (some kind of yellow squid, it appears). The peace/cease fire conditions were that a generation of children would serve as breeding vessels for the next generation of aliens (again, see the title...).
But.
The relationship turns out to be less parasitic and more mind-meld, human and Other co-joined, talking more "we" than "I"...
This is part of an Anthology called An Aura of Familiarity: Visions from the Coming Age of Networked Matter, commissioned by the IFTF as part of/asociated with their Coming Age of Networked Matter research stream.
It also contains stories by Cory Doctorow, Rudy Rucker, Ramez Naam, Bruce Sterling, and Madeline Ashby; with illustrations by Daniel Martin Diaz. Worth checking out, wouldn't you think?
The image on the right is by Diaz, and is called Binary Predator.
No, the thumbnail does not do it justice, click through to see it in a larger version!
Charles Stross has posted a short story called Bit Rot on his blog - apparently this is the missing link between Saturn's Children (review here) and the soon-to-be-released Neptune's Brood (sorry, haven't read it yet).
It's available from his blog (see link above, below, and on the picture to the right) in ePub, Kindle, and HTML format.
The short is entertaining enough if not overly complex, but is, at least for me, screaming for more (and no, I don't think Charlie will find time to flesh this thread out anytime soon).
