Supposedly .before Country was to be released 2007-02-28 but as that is/was a pseudo-event it is no wonder the technology has beaten it. And made it ridiculous. On the official release date of 28th February 2007 it had been downloaded about 9700 times already.

Anyway, you can download a free and complete pdf review copy or as an EPUB (new 2010).

Or you can buy the hardcopy paperback from amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Powells, though it first appeared on amazon.co.uk.

There is an FAQ written because of some ancient blogcoverage.

There has been one review over at POD People.

Its more alt.colonial than post-colonial, but it's still speculative.

Seven tells rotten into the bookcore of the wombwell.

Five were written before Country was named.

Two stories describe the beginnings of settlement. Four code poems recount the ongoing upheaval after initial terraforming. Some say this time of excess was deliberately encouraged. In order to forestall the conservative contraction that infects all isolated post-pioneer societies, once they begin to celebrate the burly spirit of their forebears, instead of doing it. When this sets in, the stable becomes the staid, and overloaded functions become decadent self-indulgence rather than metaphors for creativity, freedom and survival.

The last story The Isle of the Dead relates a moment of metamorphosis. Rooted in personal agency, the hero Smith seeks a treasure and finds destiny in its place. His outsider perspective, and his want to dig up the past, rewrites the kernel and creates a new beginning.

But then, as emergent structures are always more than the sum of intentions, design and/or conspiracy, the real magic happens.

•it is always more than everything

For there is also released a return of the repressed, such that Smith’s egotistical adventurism then delimits the hero forevermore as an agent of influence bearing a number of magical keepsakes. Of these talismans, the presents of several agendas, only one is the hero’s alone, but all of them tug at the heartstrings. For in seeking his fortune, the hero, talented, gifted and looking for action, is manipulated in turn, through deep time. The bias to aspire is harnessed to install a co-evolutionary upgrade. The hero is a useful vector.

The narrative power of The Isle of the Dead, unlike the earlier tales or dreams, effected the reproduction of key feedback systems. These directly lay the way for the ecosocial emergence of Country, when Starkey founded the legendary Ripplinglee, the first steadhouse. This allowed song to move over the substrate, becoming animal with landscape at levels of homeostatic consilience, for the first time, and responsibilities were held as multiple quests by every individual.