June 9, 2009
| The Seven Types of (Twenty-Four-Hour) Book Store Customer >>
Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store
Okay! My short story, “Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store,” is available now on all platforms in all universes!
It’s a 6,000-word story about recession, attraction, and data visualization. The keywords on Amazon are: books, book stores, cryptography, dating, the economy, Google, San Francisco.
“Customers who read this item also also read: the internet.”
Get it for your computer screen (or printer) here.
But I have to tell you: It looks gooood on the Kindle.
Finally, you’ll enjoy this bit of background: The seed for the story was a tweet! Back in November, Rachel wrote: “just misread ‘24hr bookdrop’ as ‘24hr bookshop’. the disappointment is beyond words.”
That’s the kind of phrase you copy and paste into your idea-file, if you’re smart. Then, you rediscover it months later, and what does it turn into? Go find out.
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Comments
I loved this story! I can't wait to introduce Colter to a girl who says, "Are you into data visualization?" and a guy who says "I am really into the kind of girl you can impress with a prototype." For what it's worth, I vote for Super Book Store Bros., the video game.
OMG it's brilliant. Please do create something, anything that earns induction into the cult. Meantime, forgive the Old School suggestion fron an Old School Boy, but that brilliant piece belongs in The New Yorker. (And on New Yorker's website, of course.)
Cheers, Jim Naughton
Bravo!
That was one potent tweet!
I think this sets a record for short fiction that hits so many of my favorite tech hobby-horses: data vis, book-scanning, crypto, Google, digital preservation!
If it isn't on Boing Boing by Friday I'll eat my hat. I mean that as a compliment.
Hey Jake! Glad you liked it. Yeah, part of my intent was to mash-up a bunch of the things I'm interested in. And by "things I'm interested in" I really mean "things we talk about on this blog."
Maybe you should suggest the link to the Boing Boing crew ;-)