Short story: “When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth”

by Jay Garmon in After Hours

on July 5, 2007, 4:43 AM PDT

Short story: “When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth”

“When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth”, a comedic sci-fi story by Cory Doctorow, has just won the Locus Award for best novelette of 2007, so publisher Baen Books has done precisely what the market demands of a high-quality, highly desired item — it’s giving it away online! (Welcome to wikinomics, net-noobs.) Doctorow is the driving force ...

“When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth”, a comedic sci-fi story by Cory Doctorow, has just won the Locus Award for best novelette of 2007, so publisher Baen Books has done precisely what the market demands of a high-quality, highly desired item — it’s giving it away online! (Welcome to wikinomics, net-noobs.)

Doctorow is the driving force behind the powerhouse Web-culture blog BoingBoing (among several other pursuits, notably as a copyfighter), and Baen is the perversely generous publisher that gives some of its best stuff away online. Together you get a cheap and easy way to while away the hours normally consumed watching status bars eke forward during software upgrades. Enjoy!

By Jay Garmon

The Trivia Geek, known to some by the mysterious alias "Jay Garmon," is an online community entrepreneur trying his luck with some promising Internet startups. To get the real skinny on his wacky business ideas--and his amateurish sci-fi short stories--read his blog, JayGarmon.net. It's like Jay without editorial oversight or decent engineering support. \ \ Jay is also the diabolical mind behind TechRepublic's Geek Trivia newsletter, a former contributing editor of TR's Geekend blog, and until March of 2008 was a project manager for TR site feature development. \ \ In a previous life (read: fresh out of college), he was an ad man, toiling away for low pay and less respect as a copywriter and producer of print ads, radio spots, and TV commercials. No, you've probably never seen his work. Be thankful. \ \ Between his ad days and his life as a TechRepublicist, he worked briefly as a Web developer, mostly using (shudder) FrontPage and SQL Server to build rickety and poorly conceived database-driven Web sites. He was self-taught, and it showed. He's also dabbled in proposal writing, though he wouldn't recommend that as a career choice. \ \ Today, when he's not trying to build the next Internet media giant, Jay reads some comic books, plays tabletop RPGs, helps run a local sci-fi con, tries to launch a career as a fiction author, watches a lot of sports, and keeps his wife and daughter happy. The last part is easiest.

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Short story: “When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth”

Short story: “When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth”

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TechRepublic Premium editorial calendar: IT policies, checklists, toolkits and research for download

The Best Human Resources Payroll Software of 2023

Windows 11 update brings Bing Chat into the taskbar

Tech jobs: No rush back to the office for software developers as salaries reach $180,000

The 10 best agile project management software for 2023

1Password is looking to a password-free future. Here’s why

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