Well, since Asimov's removed every single story I linked to from this board, it kind of takes the fun out of it. Sorry about that. It's kind of sad because reading all these free stories is what got me to start a subscription to Asimov's. Before he was a best-selling science fiction author, John Scalzi was an aspiring best-selling science fiction author publishing his stories online for free. "Agent to the Stars" is Scalzi's first novel, and is still free to read on his personal website. It's a humorous story about a Hollywood tal... (more)
A mad scientist decides it might be a good idea to create a giant virtual reality simulation that is running a copy of Earth and of most of the people in it. Fine, but in order to create this simulation, the mad scientist plans to grind our planet into a zillion supercomputing nanomachines called nants.