Free Lunch Studios

Welcome, hola, bonjour! Here's the part of the site where you can discover (nauseatingly gratuitous amounts) of self-serving information about yours truly, Tom Gordon... operator of the shadowy creative institution that somehow, inexplicably continues to exist as Free Lunch Studios (no comments about being "institutionalized" please!)

So who am I, you ask? Well, if after perusing the thirtysomething megabytes of material upon this site, you arrived at the conclusion that I am (alternately) a blatantly commercial illustrator (IE, not some neo-Dada cheater mashing together 472 image layers in Adobe Photoshop), an aspiring, decidedly non-cyberpunk SF writer ("spec-fic," "skiffy" or "sci-fi?" you decide) and/or a grouchy disestablishmentarianist type... I'd congratulate you on your inaccurate powers of observation. I also read voraciously, sing on occasion and do a little bit of musical composition on synthesizers, though my tunes are certainly nothing to write home about. In the meantime, you'll just have to be content with my obsessive drawings, ridiculously overwrought prose and bizarrely coded "new media" doohickeys until Mindspring gives me the boot.

Did I mention I have a family? Yep, the wonders never cease...

Now, "Free Lunch" (my biz name) is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the works of Robert A. Heinlein. He coined the Lunar slogan TANSTAAFL ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch") in his novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." Recently, I discovered that TANSTAAFL may have also been a sarcastic campaigning slogan used by "progressives" (yet another nice-sounding euphemism for "socialist dorks") during the thirties. I guess they were attempting something along the disconnected lines of "let them eat cake." Unfortunately, it was too darned honest and insufficently hate-filled for their tastes, so they buried THAT particular catchphrase and replaced it with such gems of political insight as "All capitalists must DIE! Kill! KILL!" Decades later, the Master exhumed the acronym and threw it into what is now considered to be the most libertarian of his SF works. Savor the irony, won't you?

Politics: a large number of blood-sucking insects! Get it? Never mind...

Naturally, I'm inclined to agree with RAH's 'Loonies', their horrendous double negatives aside. So then... why name my business something that doesn't really exist? Well, it seemed fitting as all my work deals with fantastical subject matter and rather unrealistic situations, and practically everyone who hears the name asks me "uh..what does that mean?" Of course, the name IS a double-edged sword; people also expect me to work without payment (or worse, cook them up a complimentary meal) whereby I am forced to coldly push them back into the "real world" again. But it DOES sound appropriate when applied to the Internet, probably the biggest "free lunch" in history ("Whazzat? Intellectual property rights? Ah, just shuddup n gimme dem warez, d00d!") In fact, barring the possibility of a global EMP or the whole 'Net becoming self-aware, I think a info-topia is just around the corner. Eventually the entirety of human knowledge, from the ancient tablets of Mesopotamia to the latest badly-written CGI-saturated blockbuster film... will electronically become public domain. A most exciting development, were it actually allowed to occur!

(Yeah, right. And Real Soon Now hovercars will be flying over nifty geodesic domes, and I'll be catching a commercial flight to our booming Martian terraform colony while several million nanobots keep me perpetually frozen in my mid-twenties. Hey, I can dream, can't I?)

Speaking of fantasyland, I wonder what Congress was smoking when they attached that little provision onto the Telecommunications Bill in 1996? How were they actually supposed to enforce such regulations? Who would have defined what's inappropriate? And, conversely, how will tacking ubiquitous "blue-ribbon" GIFs to gazillions of webpages affect ANY of this? Brainless symbolism is almost as bad as governmental censorship, but nevertheless I continue to dwell amongst the free-speech mob: you can bet the nice folks who drafted that (now-unconstitutional) "Communications Decency Act" will surely try again. Hey, come to think of it, while I'm scoffing at busybodied collective entities with delusions of grandeur, here's my PGP public encryption key (ASCII armored, 2048 bits) for all you surveillance and hacker-wary citizens and unfortunate souls trapped in third-rate kleptocratic enclaves out there that have Big Brother on their backs. Yep, that'll show 'em!

Gee, how time flies when you're having fun! It's actually been seven years since I first staked my claim upon the Internet with a blandly generic page of links. During the subsequent months, between Web-browsing sessions, posting on Usenet, IRC yacking and stacks upon stacks of e-mail correspondance, I've become acquainted with many peepul across the planet who've altered my intellectual/professional path in some way with their works. I've engaged in countless skirmishes where I've had to fight eloquently for the things I truly believe in. On the other hand, I've ALSO had to cast aside many long-held convictions through the efforts of some intelligent 'Net denizen out there. Oh, what a long, strange trip it's been!

Still, I remain convinced that the Internet is the intellectual, artistic and economic frontier for the human race; the first true "laissez-faire" free market of ideas and products, and am happy to be a part of it.

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