I just wanted to throw this link up really quickly before I crash for the night.
If you enjoyed the movie The Matrix at all, you really should check out the official website. Rather than just using it to promote the movie and its upcoming sequels, they’ve got a whole section of the site devoted to exploring the universe of the Matrix, primarily through online comics, with a few short stories.
There’s a lot of really neat stories in there — while not dealing directly with Neo or the other characters from the movie, all the authors have been given free reign to explore the possible storylines of this fictional universe.
The one I’d like to point out, however, is ‘Goliath’, by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman has in recent years become one of my favorite modern authors — as well as the Sandman comic books (which are just incredible, by the way), he’s written some fiction, both on his own and with other authors (the book Good Omens was written with Terry Pratchett, and is just hilarious). With ‘Goliath’, he contributes his own take on the Matrix with a short story that I find to be one of the best contributions on the Matrix site.
In any case, if you’re at all into The Matrix, Neil Gaiman, or just really well-written short fiction, I highly suggest you take a few minutes and give it a read.
It’s actually the title of a DVD coming out sometime in 2003, where (as far as I can tell from the trailer) nine stories set in the universe of The Matrix will be told using various styles of animation. Sounds cool, and quite a few of the shots in the trailer are little short of mindblowing. Certainly seems to be worth keeping an eye out for, in any case.