“Mathralon” is a somewhat unusual story. I’ve been tinkering with it for a year or two, off and on, and the idea’s been in my head for much longer. But though I was convinced I had a fabulous idea, I couldn’t quite figure out the way I wanted to get it across. The characters of my early drafts were all plasticy, the action was formulaic, and the dialog trite.

So I decided: hey, if the plot, the characters, and the dialog are giving me such fits, why don’t I just take them out?

Sounds like “Mathralon” is something of a one-trick story, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s something of an epistemological think-piece, a meditation on the nature of work and why we do it. It’s a spotlight shone on the dark places of an otherwise well-oiled economic machine. It’s a protest against subjugating one’s self to one’s job. And it got a really kick-ass reaction from the crowd at the KGB Bar when I read it there last year.

If you want to hear me read it, come to Dining Room A in the James Madison Building at the Library of Congress this Thursday, February 21 at 12:10 pm. The building’s located at 101 Independence Ave, SE in downtown Washington, DC. The title of the reading is “Capitalists at Warp Speed,” a title that I’m really sorry to say I came up with.

I’m unclear how long the reading’s supposed to go for, but I’m also planning on bringing along the first two chapters of my upcoming novel MultiReal to read as well. And after the reading’s done, there will be autographed copies of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two and my first novel Infoquake for sale.

For those of you not blessed enough to live in the Washington, DC area, go to Amazon and order the book. Or you can wait a few days until after I post “Mathralon” onto my website, read it, and then go order the book. Either way, you know you’re going to buy it. There are original stories there by Peter Watts, Michael Moorcock, Karl Schroeder, Mary Robinette Kowal, Chris Roberson, Eric Brown, Kay Kenyon, Neal Asher, Paul Di Filippo, and more. It’s cheap. It’s fabulous. How much more convincing do you need?

Those of you in DC, hope to see you at the Library of Congress!

This means I probably won’t be blogging again until the new year. So here are a few end-of-the-year tidbits to keep you occupied:

I am now the proud owner of a Blu-Ray player. Why Blu-Ray and not HD-DVD? It was a gift, and the gift-giver’s rationale went something like this: Dave loves Pixar movies. Pixar movies are currently only being released on Blu-Ray. Ergo, Dave would prefer a Blu-Ray player. Honestly, it’s not a bad bit of reasoning, and it resulted in me watching 2001 in high-def at blistering volumes on Tuesday night.

I’ve written a new introduction to Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone. I was pleased to be asked to write an introduction for the new U.S. edition of Mervyn Peake’s last Gormenghast novel, Titus Alone. I’m quite honored to be associated with the late, great Peake in even this small capacity, and especially honored considering Tad Williams was the guy they asked to write the introduction for Peake’s second Gormenghast novel. Overlook Press told me I could post the introduction here on the blog when the book comes out — Amazon says March 25, 2008 — but in the meantime you can read my previous blog pieces about Peake’s Gormenghast novels here and here.

Reading at the Library of Congress. I’m scheduled to do a reading on February 21 at the U.S. Library of Congress in downtown Washington, D.C. in late February. This is part of their ongoing “What If… Fantasy and Science Fiction Forum,” co-chaired by the marvelous Colleen Cahill, with whom I’ve shared a number of con panels recently. Since Solaris Books’ anthology The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 2 is scheduled to hit the streets right around that time, I’m going to be reading my short story from that book, “Mathralon.” And, time permitting, a chapter from MultiReal.

Buy The Kept Man by Jami Attenberg. A fellow student of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars department, Jami Attenberg, has just released her debut novel, The Kept Man. Jami and I were in a number of writing classes together at Johns Hopkins, and since there’s a remote possibility she still has some of my horrible college stories buried in a trunk somewhere, I figure pimping her book is a good insurance policy. (You might also be inclined to buy it because it’s gotten excellent reviews from People, Interview, and Kirkus Reviews. Interview called it “a challenge to apathy”! That’s awesome.) (Go visit Jami’s website too while you’re at it.)

I’ve finished William Gibson’s Spook Country. If I get ambitious in the next few days, I might post a review of the book. All I can say is that Spook Country cements Gibson’s status as one of the greatest living English-language novelists — and he does that by, like, page 30.

My Return of the King piece has been seriously Stumbled. I’m not sure how in the heck these things happen. But after I just installed Google Analytics on my web server, I noticed that suddenly my blog piece “Revisiting Middle Earth: The Return of the King” has been getting thousands of visitors per day from StumbleUpon. I’m too lazy to link to all of my “Revisiting Middle Earth” pieces here, but you can find them pretty easily yourself by clicking in that search box in the top right and typing “Revisiting Middle Earth.”