This page offers free access to some stories or novel-excerpts each year for gracious consideration by either members of SFWA or members of the World Science Fiction Convention -- though, in fact, anyone is welcome. Enjoy.
also recommended
The 2013 WorldCon will be held in San Antonio, Texas, and London in 2014. They put on a wonderful show, fun and engaging, and provide a chance to meet your favorite authors, attend stimulating events, and vote for the Hugos, too! With a supporting membership, you can even vote for that year's Hugo without attending the conference. Consider joining!
about the author
David Brin is a scientist and best-selling author whose future-oriented novels include Earth, The Postman, and Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War. (The Postman inspired a major film in 1998.) Brin is also known as a leading commentator on modern technological trends. His nonfiction book -- The Transparent Society -- won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. Brin's newest novel EXISTENCE explores the ultimate question: Billions of planets may be ripe for life, even intelligence. So where is Everybody?
Although he explores many fields, heedless of credentials, Brin does have degrees from Caltech and UCSD (PhD in Physics, working with Nobelist Hannes Alfven). As a speaker Brin shares unique and often humorous insights to the way technology may affect our human future. For detailed vita see his biography and public speaking & consulting pages.
to engage these issues
I blog specifically to discuss -- and update -- the political and scientific issues I raise in these articles. If you come to argue rationally, you're voting, implicitly, for a civilization that values open minds and discussions among equals.
My one work published in 2012 and eligible for this year's HUGO award is EXISTENCE... now available in paperback! Peruse dozens of wonderful reviews, or watch me read aloud several chapters, or download parts on the main Existence page.
Below are links to four stand-alone novellas that make up separate story lines in Existence. (Each has a satisfying conclusion but none of them are spoilers for the main arc of the novel!) But first, please enjoy the vivid preview-trailer by web artist Patrick Farley:
STAND-ALONE NOVELLAS from EXISTENCE
THE SMARTEST MOB - A news reporter finds herself aboard a passenger Zeppelin that might -- perhaps -- have been turned into a weapon of terror. No one will listen -- not the government or the Zep company. No one, that is, except a semi-random band of hyper-linked amateurs, scattered around the globe.
AFICIONADO - Take a wild rocket ride -- the new sport of the super-rich in 2050. Hacker Sander is spoiled, temperamental and a champion rocket-jock, expert at the game of Space War... till a crash landing throws him into lethal peril. His sole hope? A tribe of strangely savvy sea creatures, with a secret need of their own.
THE SHELTER OF TRADITION - In 2050 Shanghai, a mother and her child must flee dark forces in broad daylight, while evading the gaze of a hundred million cameras on every ledge and lamp-post. Her only hope is assistance from a strange little boy... and the refuge of the Wonderful World of Disney and the Monkey King.
SHORESTEADING - This novella-excerpt from Existence tells the story of a brave Chinese man, trying to make a life for his family in the flooded boundaries of Shanghai, who stumbles upon a great and terrible discovery.
The first three of these novellas stand well entirely on their own, though be warned, reading them will make you want Existence. These novellas (and an Interlidolude) are also available on the main Existence page -- where David Brin reads the first three chapters aloud.
