And you've got all the time in the world

I read it, and liked it... but then, I like most of Ringo's stuff that I've read (mostly the war against the Posleen series). The neat premise about people turning into different things isn't really explored much, because like the blurb says, everything goes wrong and breaks down. Most of it is about a post-apocalyptic society based around a rennaisance festival.

It's also quite obviously the first in a series. I'm eagerly awaiting the others...

Hm ... first in a series, and Renaissance Faire, are warning signals. Still, I'll put it on the list of maybe things to try out when I get through my freshly-acquired Clifford Simak and Stanislaw Lem piles.

Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon's FurryMuck novelization Chrome Circle

Guh buh wuh?

--Tottle

It may not literally be FurryMuck; I forget which online text-based virtual forum it was based on. The novel was part of a series (which came to a halt for, I think, real-life problems) about modern-day elves and their habit of building and racing cars that work just as if humans built them.

Anyway, Chrome Circle follows a kid, a kitsune, a dragon and such who end up doing some darned thing or other, and for whatever reason end up in the Real World represented by the text representation of things on a muck. The plot pretty well stalls out there, but you get iconic things like giant dragons and a cartoon sun and fox-tailed humans and so on hanging around.

I was given to understand a number of the minor characters are recognizable figures from furry fandom of that era, representing one or the other author's time on a furry muck and using it -- quite reasonably -- as inspiration and setting. (It's just before my time, so no, I'm not in it.) I don't remember if they get back to the cars.

Have you ever read "Mister Boy" by James Kelly? I think it appeared in Asimov's magazine many (10-15) years ago. It deals with a society where people can be rebuilt into whatever physical form pleases them.

I was certainly reading Asimov's in that era, although I'm not sure if I specifically read that one. Was it the one with roving gangs of hammerhead sharks terrorizing the streets and the guy who turned into a dinosaur clone of himself to find a solution?

You're thinking of something else. Mister Boy was about a 40-something man who'd kept the physical form of a child at his mother's insistence. They kept changing identities, and enrolling him in school as though he were really 12 years old. The mother had given up her physical body some years before and existed as a computer entity, and his best friend was a Troodon (I envied him) who had trouble doing his homework because his dinosaur hands didn't allow him to type well. It was a strange, compelling story. A couple 'Mister Boys' popped up on usenet after it came out :)

Ooh! Now, yes, I do remember reading, and re-reading, that story. One of the parents in it had turned herself into a living replica of the Statue of Liberty, I think. I loved the troodon.

I should dig out the magazine and find it; I suspect I'd appreciate it more now, although I liked it before.