Extremely Lame

One of the things about the Information Age that is good is how it’s empowered the little guy to do things that once only giant companies were able to do before. Of course, that’s also one of the bad things about the Information Age. But I digress. Movies that died an untimely death due to being essentially abandoned by the studio can not only survive, but thrive in the DVD market (See: Office Space). Hell, movies that don’t even make the theaters and go straight to DVD can get spread by word of mouth alone and get used in fan-made first person shooter mods (See: The Boondock Saints). Strong DVD sales and syndication numbers can even bring about a show coming back after being cancelled (See: Family Guy). And when people get creative with someone’s game and aren’t sued into Oblivion for doing so, great things can happen (see: Red vs. Blue)

Fan support is being paid attention to more and more by major companies, so much so that it’s getting difficult to remember them all. Jericho saw a second season even though it was slated for cancellation. Futurama got four movies on DVD. Serenity was made.

And on that last issue, fan support is trying to get a second season of Firefly to be produced and distributed (Note, I skipped over the Flash intro on that link because Flash intros suck). Nothing is in the works yet, but since fans of the show were able to get a full-blown movie made after the show was prematurely cancelled, I’m going to go ahead and assume this.

While major companies have finally started to embrace this, for some, it’s just not fast enough, so some artists give their stuff away for free. Nine Inch Nails did it with their most recent album, and I’ve recently discovered a novel written by Cory Doctorow called Little Brother that he’s giving away for free. You can go download it here. I’ve read the first chapter and put it down because I’d have been up all day reading it otherwise. I’m going to go ahead and buy a dead tree copy for myself, and I’ll probably buy a few more and give them to people and tell them that they must read it.

It’s designed for juveniles, but then again, so was Harry Potter and most of the anime series that make it here to the U.S. and that hasn’t stopped anyone yet. I like to think of it as a “juvenile near future dystopian cyberpunk thriller,” which combines some of my favorite things to read: science fiction and dystopian futures. If you have the time, I highly recommend you take a gander at it.