Cory! Thanks for the words! You sure are euphoric today, wow. Er, I hope it's you, there's no authentication today. If it's not you, then, well, bleah. The usual Cory responses on the discussion boards usually involve expletives and telling people to shove things places.

I just go to http://premium.salon.com/daypass/index.jsp first.

Wow. Well, there went my morning. One hour spent reading and ignoring everything else, and now an afternoon of dreaming and thinking about the story. And quite a bit to think about there too.

Bravo! Can't wait for the next!

8,000 words! How do you write so fast? Tell us the story of your writer's block and subsequent hypnosis.

He can't tell us -- it's a trapdoor in the hypnosis. If he reveals the secrets, snap, he's blocked again.

I'm still digesting the story, but I enjoyed the first pass through nonetheless. My favorite aspect was this world's background holes. Why are people living in body-sized caskets when there's so much potential living space (if only in cyberspace)? What exactly is the significant of being a "post-person"? Why are there still conventional universities when people can transfer information directly into their brains?

This story is a nice example of how potential inconsistencies can add to (rather than subtract from) the depth of narrative. (After all, real life can seem very inconsistent to us simple individuals.) The key, I believe, is to focus the story on the correct conflicts and characters. One particularly annoying type of poor storytelling (found in quite a few films) is to arrange things so illogically that you would have to tell a far more detailed and interesting story just to make sense of the original (my favorite example is "Bladerunner").

Another good one, Cory. Thanks for sharing!

Good stuff. I like!

"arrange things so illogically that you would have to tell a far more detailed and interesting story just to make sense of the original"

Um... 42!

Corey sez:
"I don't really write sequels. More than half the point of writing sf is thinking up new worlds, and sequels involve revisiting places I've left behind."

...But more than half the fun of reading them is revisiting worlds you've so firmly established in one's imagination. This is why everyone bugs you for sequels. And will continue: More please!

Great story, Cory. That'll be on my nominating ballot next year.

But Salon hates me. Safari crashed on every single page, usually well after it had loaded and I was halfway down the page reading. At least it didn't lose the cookie, so I didn't have to watch one of those stupid ads every time it crashed.

I bet it's the Flash ads on the pages. Sometimes I wish the technology for animated ads had never been developed...all they do is eat up more bandwidth and annoy people like me. And when they're poorly done, they crash browsers. :-(

I installed Mozilla firebird, but I did not bother installing flash in it. I dont go to that many flash pages, but when I do I just load up crummy ie.

The internet is much better now.

firebird also blocks popups by default and has built in banner blocking if you want.

I should check if someone has made, or maybe make it my self, a module for firebird that would let you easily turn flash on or off.

Good stuff, Cory. You make it look easy.

Cory, this is your best yet. Dynamite!

Iax: check out the PrefBar for mozilla: http://prefbar.mozdev.org/
among other niceties, it gives you a big "Kill Flash" button.

Is there another source? I don't know which one of my filters is killing Salon (particularly its Day Pass system).

Got round the filters. Very enjoyable, thank you.