Vernor Vinge has put the entire text of his magnificent, prescient, mind-alteringly good novel Rainbows End online as a free download. This was one of the best books of 2006, a book that practically defines what "post-cyberpunk" really means: stories about what happens when the world (and not the street) finds its own use for technology. The tech touches -- massive, augmented reality ARGs; adaptive full-body user-interfaces; destructive book-scanners -- are half-predictive, half-allegorical, and entirely provocative. What a treat!

The first bit of dumb luck came disguised as a public embarrassment for the European Center for Defense against Disease. On July 23, schoolchildren in Algiers claimed that a respiratory epidemic was spreading across the Mediterranean. The claim was based on clever analysis of antibody data from the mass transit systems of Algiers and Naples.

The Sunrise Plague had been based on a Pseudomimivirus.