I, Hacker - Preface

In the following days I will be posting a novella I wrote. It is a bit over 20,000 words and is a pretty easy read. It is 5 chapters, and each chapter has 5 parts. I will be posting the novella between December 1st and 25th.

I started writing this the day after my mother died as a therapeutic outlet. Originally no more than 3,000 words, the story grew as I worked through it—I guess I needed more therapy than I'd originally thought. Normally I don't release my writing to anyone; I write only for myself. However, I felt I needed to share this, whether as part of the therapy process or simply because I like it better than most of my stories.

The original draft was a mess—not much more than a rough outline, mostly about the setting, which I'll describe shortly. The second draft was where the story actually started to come together, though it remained basically a stream of consciousness. It began as a spy thriller using real people and real events. In the third draft I made major changes: the original story had four or five characters, but by the third draft there were only two, with 90% of the story following a single character. I also removed all but one of the real-world events.

This story takes place in an alternate America where the Cold War never ended and Ronald Reagan was elected to six terms. The military-industrial complex runs the western hemisphere and late-stage capitalism is in full swing. The computer industry isn't dominated by Intel and Microsoft but rather by Commodore Computers and id Software, and virtual reality is on the verge of becoming a reality.

As a side note, I don't consider myself a good writer—I simply write because I enjoy it. I consider this my best work and believe it could be even better, but I don't think I'll develop it further. I'm not really interested in feedback; if you liked it, drop me a note. If you didn't, please keep it to yourself. At some point I'll wrap this up into a PDF, an EPUB, or both and put it up for download.