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!
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"...
All I can add is that, to my knowledge, this is the first non-US/UK Nebula winner, my congratualations, and a strong recommendation to amble over to Clarkesworld and read the story!
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).
