Just a quick note that I am catching up fast this week on Shadow Unit. I have read all the short bites and am working my way through the 8 episodes.
This is because the “season finale” is coming next week and I have read that this will be a multi media, interactive, enjoy-it-live-on-the-site-and-forums kind of thing.

It is actually a blast to read, so I figure I’d give it another plug - I’d love to discuss it with some of you :D

From Elizabeth Bear:

If you have been waiting to catch up/start reading Shadow Unit until the season is over, may I respectfully suggest that it is now approximately one week until the first season finale extravaganza begins. And, um. It’s the sort of thing that is going to be much more wonderful chaotic fun to participate in real-time than to read about later.

Trust me on this.

Shadow Unit, for those of you joining us in progress, is a web serial/hyperfiction written by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Amanda Downum, Sarah Monette, and, er, me. It’s modeled on a television show format, complete with episodic and season-long plotlines, burgeoning mysteries, and an ensemble cast of unrealistically sexy smart people attempting to save the world from the worst monsters imaginable… unless they die trying. It’s sort of what would happen if Millennium, The X-Files, and Criminal Minds had a love child, though I have to admit we have yet to have an episode with an industrial microwave. But surely, it’s only a matter of time.

Current site content comprises seven novelettes or novellas, a whole bunch of vignettes, artwork, a message board with thriving discussion threads and an awesome community (and a fine obsession with food!), a plethora of fairly lightly concealed Easter Eggs, and interactive character blogs.

Additional toys will be provided over the hiatus, and the current plan is to offer first-season community members a particularly nice toy in the fairly near future.

All content is free, unless you are moved to donate (We are currently using the Public Radio Guiltware model), and while we are exploring traditional publication options, there is no way on Earth that all the web content is going to make it into dead tree form. There’s just too much of it. So, you know. Here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor.

I enjoy a lot what Elizabeth Bear writes, and here is a story available online, a nice twist on a classic theme: The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder. I dont quite click for the rock music setting, whether here or in other books, but it is a nice idea.

One I liked better is shared online: Stella Nova, around Tycho Brahe and Keppler. Of course as a trained physicist with a huge soft spot for science, this is a great topic (incidentally a book has been written this year by a famous french writer which fictionalizes those same characters, I wonder if he read this one)

More about Elizabeth Bear:

The official site, her fiction journal (contains stories and ideas) and her personal journal
She’s also on librarything and frequents several fiction forums,
And of course Shadow Unit, the online episodic fiction which I mentioned before and which deserves support, I think.

I have several books by her on my TBR list, and she has a new book out in a few weeks (in the US, the UK says December) - the first few chapters are available for free online. It looks absolutely fascinating to me, exploring the end of the world from Norse mythology. Will have to get that. Amazon UK | Amazon US