Read “Unwirer” As It’s Written

The dynamic duo of Science Fiction (Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross) are writing their next creation, “Unwirer,” using a blog to keep track of the process.
The story’s already sold. It will be published in ReVisions when it’s finished.
Here’s how they describe the story:

…is an alternate history in which the copyright industry’s 1995 bid at the National Information Infrastructure hearings to redesign the Internet was successful. Now, America labors under a kind of MiniTel hell, where every online transaction costs a few cents and you can only field a website with the phone company’s permission. Meanwhile, the French IT giant Be, Inc., has launched a global revolution with the first WiFi AP, and American guerrilla networkers are running through the hills on the US side of the Canadian and Mexican borders, establishing meshed access-points, working to provide end-to-end meshed IP from sea to shining sea.

Here’s a clip from the story itself:

He’d lost his job and spent the best part of six months inside before his attorney plea-bargained them down, from a twenty years-to-life infoterrorism stretch to second degree tarriff evasion. The judge sentenced him to time served plus two years’ probation, two years in which he wasn’t allowed to program a goddamn microwave oven, let alone admin the networks that had been his trade. Prison hadn’t been as bad for him as it could have been — unwirers got respect — but while he was inside Janice filed for divorce, and by the time he got out he’d lost everything he’d spent the last decade building — his marriage, his house, his savings, his career. Everything except for the unwiring.
It was this experience that had turned him from a fun-loving geek into what $NAME [[need credible name for Chairman of the FCC]] called “one of the information terrorists undermining our homeland’s security.” And so it was with a shudder and a glance over his shoulder that he climbed the front steps and put his key in the lock of the house he and Dan rented.

One thought on “Read “Unwirer” As It’s Written

  1. adario strange

    “Now, America labors under a kind of MiniTel hell, where every online transaction costs a few cents and you can only field a website with the phone company’s permission.”
    sounds like japan. :^)

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