So, "The Island" got a Hugo nom. Which means I'm supposed to pimp it, which is fine because it's been far too long since I swapped out the fiction on this page anyway. So here you go, with a couple of embedded illustrations by Dan Ghiordanescu and Chris Butler.

A bit of background. "The Island" is a standalone novelette. It is also one episode in a projected series of connected tales (a lá Stross's Accellerando or Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles) that start about a hundred years from now and extends unto the very end of time. And in some parallel universe where I not only get a foothold into the gaming industry but actually keep one, it is a mission level for what would be, in my opinion, an extremely kick-ass computer game.

For the time being, though, it's just a story — stretched out across the screen below, or packaged neatly as a pdf under "Short Stories", above, to take with you and eat on the fly. It's also available in Sony Reader and epub formats, thanks to the efforts of a fellow I know only as "Mike". Update: Apparently that e-pub file may not work on all readers — it doesn't work properly with Stanza on the iPhone, anyway — but this file, courtesy of one Fergus Heywood, does. So I'm told. Although I myself don't have an iPhone.

However you take it, I hope you find it to your taste.