A couple of months ago, SFSignal invited me to contribute my views on the finale of Battlestar Galactica to a special they were running in their Mind Meld section. I couldn’t at the time, because I hadn’t seen the ending. But a few weeks ago, I finally got a chance to watch the last three or four episodes, all in one go. And yesterday, I grabbed a little time to put together my thoughts. They’re online now at sfsignal.com. Let me know what you think!
“Fear not the future, weep not for the past.” —Percy Bysshe Shelley
I recently learned that Sunborn has been scheduled for mass market paperback release in 0110 — that is to say, January 2010. Yeah, that’s a while, yet. So, if you’ve been waiting for the paperback — oh, what the hey, you might as well spring for the hardcover now, rather than wait that long, eh? Sure, I thought so, too. 🙂
As I answered some of the questions that I’ve probably not gotten around to answering here, think of it as Writing Question #10. (I was going to call it #X because I was too lazy to look back through the blog to see what the last one was numbered. But then I relented and checked, and saw that I’d called the last one #X-Z because I was too lazy then. So I figured I’d better check further. I think this is right.)
I have thoughts on marketing strategy, research, and other matters dear to the hearts of all who are interested in writing. Check it out.
“You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the work done. For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality.” —Ray Bradbury
While we’re waiting for the “roadable” airplane, the Transition, to come down to our price range—not to mention fly (but they did get it off the ground, in the first short flight test!)—check out this baby: a flying motorcycle called the Switchblade:
Switchblade flying motorcycle
That’s for me! You betcha! According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, “Samson Motorworks has been working on a flying motorcycle, the Switchblade, for two and a half years. The three-wheel motorcycle’s design features three lifting surfaces, like the Piaggio Avanti, and side-by-side seating for two people… The wings will fold beneath the motorcycle’s body… Cameras will provide visibility to the rear, and an optional ballistic parachute will be offered.”
Oh man, I can’t wait. (It hasn’t flown yet, either, but it will. It will.) Buy a lot of those books from me, people—okay? A lot of books!
While we’re waiting, here’s a picture of the Transition in its first leap into the air.
“Up in the sky, rocketing past Higher than high, faster than fast, Out into space, into the sun Look at her go when we give her the gun.” —Space Academy Cadet Corps song, from Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
With any luck, I’ll never have to call a real Mayday—but it is May Day! I guess I’ve lost my marbles, because I’m giving away the store! That’s right, everything must go! Come and take it away! Come now, before I come to my senses! Yes, folks, I’m talking about Eternity’s End:
Eternity’s End (Tor Books)
That’s the novel that got me nominated for a Nebula, and took me so long to write, it knocked the Chaos Chronicles on their ass by so many years I had to give away free ebooks of them to remind people—no, wait wait wait wait wait—wrong script! [Dammit, who gave me that paper?]
Let’s try again. Eternity’s End is my Nebula-nominated novel about a star rigger named Legroeder who sets out in search of the lost ship Impris, Flying Dutchman of the stars. And along the way, encounters interstellar pirates and some deep-cyber romance. This book is free range, free running, cage free, up on the web for you to download for free! That’s in multi-format, DRM-free ebook format. Come catch one and take it home with you. And check out the other free ebooks while you’re at it.
Paypal donations are warmly welcomed, as always—but only if you want to, and only if you think it’s worth it.
Come check it out. Trust me, you’ll like it.
And—very important!—kudoes and thanks to Anne King, for undertaking the huge task of proofing the manuscript and wrestling the book into the many ebook formats! Thanks, Ann!
All the RTF files are ready at last, for a big new release of my backlist through E-reads! If all goes well, nine of my titles should be available for purchase by mid-May through Fictionwise, Amazon Kindle Store, Sony Ebook Store, and other places where fine ebooks are sold. Many of them will also be available in paper as print-on-demand titles, under the E-reads imprint. (Not all, because the rights to some are still held by Tor.)
Some are reissues, with covers and formatting corrected from versions presently on sale, and some are all new. Included in the new are The Infinity Link, The Rapture Effect, Dragon Rigger, and Seas of Ernathe. (That last holds the record as my longest-out-of-print title.)
Speaking of print on demand, my friend Victoria sent me a link to a story in the UK’s Daily Mail, concerning a standalone print-on-demand book maker, called the Espresso Book Machine, installed in a Blackwell bookstore on Charing Cross Road for market testing. Victoria wondered when we would see these in the U.S. Well, it’s already been demoed to the U.S. bookseller trade! Here’s the scoop on the E-reads blog. And here’s what the machine looks like:
Finally—good news or bad news?—Amazon has just bought Lexcycle, the creators of the Stanza book reading software for the iPhone and iTouch. Ooh. Makes me uneasy. With Fictionwise now part of Barnes & Noble, who knows what’s going to happen?
Science fiction writer J.G. Ballard has died, at the age of 78. The news took me by surprise when I read the Boston Globe this morning. But what stunned me more was that someone could write an obituary of the man and not even mention that he wrote science fiction, much less that he was a highly influential writer in the New Wave movement of the 1960s.
I discovered Ballard as a teenager, with the short stories gathered into collections such as The Voices of Time and Vermilion Sands, and then the apocalyptic novels The Drowned World and The Crystal World. Ballard’s voice, darkly psychological, was a startling departure from any science fiction I had ever read before. I still have the paperbacks:
At the time, I knew nothing about the New Wave movement, I just knew I had discovered a writer who tapped into something in my own psyche—and I wanted more. Unfortunately, his work that followed, such as Crash, left me feeling cold and alienated, rather than engaged, and I regretfully moved on. But those earlier stories left a mark on me, one that I think probably influenced my own writing in subtle ways, and perhaps more than the work of any other single writer shifted my interests toward the psychological in SF.
J.G. Ballard: best known for Empire of the Sun, maybe—but one of the science fiction greats.
Another little project I picked up along the way is a small video contribution to what I believe will be a very cool and probably intense and moving arts festival, coming up on April 25 at the Vineyard Church in Cambridge. It’s called Lydia Fair, and it’s bringing together artists of all stripes (painters, theater people, singers, one fiction writer that I know of—me, and heaven knows who all). The theme is Rescue, and it’s a benefit fundraiser for two organizations called Love146 and Rebuild Africa. I’m really looking forward to it; there’s tremendous artistic talent in the Vineyard community.
As for my part…I’m working on a video adaptation of the prologue to Sunborn. I’ve shortened and reworked the audio so that it sounds much better than the mp3 currently up on my website, and am using a sequence of great cosmic imagery from a variety of NASA observatories including Hubble, Chandra, SOHO, and others. A fellow named Adam, who does a lot of video work for the church, is helping me shape it into a “visualization” that we hope will evoke the story of Deeaab, as he wanders the galaxy encountering sentient suns, and wondering how he might rescue them from whatever is killing them. It’ll only be about three minutes long, but I’ve gone from thinking “Hopeless!” a week ago to thinking, “This is going to be cool.”
Afterward, my goal is to put it up online so you can all see it. In the meantime, if you live anywhere near Cambridge, Mass., you might want to check out Lydia Fair.
“We are stardust, we are golden We are billion-year-old carbon And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” —Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock”
Sort of. Not that you can tell. Turned out I wasn’t really done with tax-purgatory, after all. Not when I tried to finalize my daughter’s return. You would not believe the ways the IRS has of extracting money from you when you are (or have) a college-age kid whom a generous relative has helped out by putting some money in trust for your education. Turbotax and I nearly came to blows over this one.
Anyway. You didn’t come here to listen to me whine about taxes, did you? My family has to listen to that; you don’t. (Family is where, when you go there, they have to take you in…and listen to you whine about taxes.)
Right now, we have a house full of college kids. Daughter is home on break, and brought some friends with her. Great kids; it’s fun having them here. But I do have to be careful tiptoeing through the house late at night, so as not to trip over sleeping bodies.
The ebook project has been consuming way more time than I had dreamed possible. I probably mentioned, ereads is releasing some new (to their list) titles of mine, to go on sale at Fictionwise and elsewhere—and at the same time, reissuing the ones that have been on sale. A reissue of an ebook sounds wrong, somehow, doesn’t it? But it all started because some of the books went on sale with the wrong covers, and it turns out the only way to fix that is to reissue them. And then it turns out there are a lot of irritating formatting errors in at least some of my books currently on sale. So we’re just re-releasing the whole lot, along with the new ones. This means a lot of proofing, and a lot of correcting. Fortunately, I have a capable and enthusiastic reader-volunteer helping me with a lot of the grunt work. Thank you, Ann!
The weather has turned promising, I’ve emerged from tax-return and financial-aid purgatory, and it’s time for a Spring Special! Things are moving more slowly than I had hoped on the Tor ebook front, so I’m taking matters into my own hands. For a limited time, I am making Sunborn available for free download in all major ebook formats! DRM-free, now and always. So come and get it. Tell your friends! Bring your girlfriend/boyfriend and your grandmother. Bring your dog.
How long is a “limited time”? I’m not sure, but when Tor gets its ebooks out the door and into the stores, I expect these will come down.
“You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.” —Maxim Gorky
