Peter Morrison, an audioblogger who attended last week's World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, recorded my reading of my new novel-in-progress (working title "Themepunks"). The audio is live now — I'm really happy with how it came out. I love hearing writers read their own work, and I love reading my stuff aloud: it's so much cooler than just reading off the printed page.
He reached down below a work-table and hosted up a huge triptych made out of three hinged car-doors stood on end. Carefully, he unfolded it and stood it like a screen on the cracked concrete floor.
The inside of the car-doors had been stripped clean and polished to a high metal gleam that glowed like sterling silver. Spot-welded to it were all manner of soda tins, pounded flat and cut into gears, chutes, springs and other mechanical apparatus.
"It's a mechanical calculator," he said, proudly. "About half as powerful as Univac. I milled all the parts using a laser-cutter. What you do is, fill this hopper with GI Joe heads, and this hopper with Barbie heads. Crank this wheel and it will drop a number of M&Ms equal to the product of the two values into this hopper, here." He put three scuffed GI Joe heads in one hopper and four scrofulous Barbies in another and began to crank, slowly. A music-box beside the crank played a slow, irregular rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel" while the hundreds of little coin-sized gears turned, flipping switches and adding and removing tension to springs. After the weasel popped a few times, twelve brown M&Ms fell into an outstretched rubber hand. He picked them out carefully and offered them to her. "It's OK. They're not from the trash," he said. "I buy them in bulk." He turned his broad back to her and heaved over a huge galvanized tin washtub full of brown M&Ms. "See, it's a bit-bucket!" he said.
(Thanks, Peter!)
