A great recent science fiction novel is now available free online...

http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html

I didn't like reading it online much at first, then I realized I could turn it into a pdf file pretty easily and that made the reading experience quite a bit better - keeping track of pages, navigating thru it easily, etc. I copied the page above (the whole novel is on one single html page), dropped it into open office write (or any word-processor that can output as .pdf files), and exported it to my hard drive as a pdf. Slick as can be, and it made reading it easy.

Vinge creates a really well detailed vision of a future ubiquitous computing environment, with compters so integrated into one's clothing (and visuals via contact lenses with built in full vision heads up displays) that “clothes sense” has come to mean computer skills.

And an equally incredible depiction of future education.

Never once does he mention what energy source powers this incredible near-future society, but it's clear at least that it's an electricity economy.

A little slow at the beginning, but then it turns into a pretty good, pretty engaging yarn. Wonderful use of jargon and language. Perhaps he relies a little too heavily on the emergence mythos, but it left me with many new juicy ideas to mull over.

I'm really enjoying the pdf format for novels, something I didn't expect. Combine pdfs with some sort of micropayment system, and we could well have the basics of the future of publishing.