Two more pieces of book promotion for y’all to chew on.
First, I’ve been interviewed by Shaun Farrell for the Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing podcast. It’s a rather lengthy interview — 30 minutes or so — and it covers everything from whether Natch is the “hero” of Jump 225, why the series is titled Jump 225 in the first place, what is the nature of Natch’s drive to succeed, and why Moonwatcher from 2001 was in a way the first Natch.
Stargate writer and producer Joseph Mallozzi posted my answers to his book club questions about Infoquake recently. The group really seemed to delve into the book and had a very insightful discussion, not only here, but during several days of preceding blog posts. Topics covered include my favorite character, how likely I think the Infoquake future is, and why (or whether) the book ends abruptly. Excerpt:
Iamza writes: “I’m not so sure I really understand MultiReal. As outlined by Margaret, it sounds kind of great — a chance to have things turn out exactly as you wanted. But what happens when the batter wants to hit a six and the bowler wants to get his tenth wicket for no runs (hah, take that, baseball analogies! Give me cricket any day of the week). Whose reality ultimately wins out — or do both batter and bowler split off into separate universes, each achieving their individual goal? For every individual who’s installed the MultiReal program, are there a zillion universes in which things go wrong, and only one in which everything is golden.
DLE: Now you see the big dilemma with MultiReal technology. One of the main subplots in book 2 is how to resolve conflicts very much like you describe. Natch, Jara & Co. discover that there are a lot of broad sociological implications in how MultiReal resolves these conflicts. For instance: how do you charge customers for all those realities? Do you charge a flat fee, or do you charge for each alternate reality they pick? If you choose the latter, does that mean the rich would automatically win every argument?
(Admit it, you’re just making these funny cricket terms up. “The batter wants to hit a six”? “Getting his tenth wicket”? Surely you should not be using such language on a family blog like Mr. Mallozzi’s.)
I just ran across this interview of Ray Kurzweil
with this quote:
“By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain (that will get there noninvasively, through the capillaries) will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. So if you want to go into virtual reality the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were actually in the virtual environment. So this will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses. You will have a body in these virtual-reality environments that you can control just like your real body, but it does not need to be the same body that you have in real reality. We’ll be able to interact with people in any way in these virtual-reality environments. That will replace most travel, but we’ll also have new travel technologies for our real bodies using nanotechnology.”
If only he had given attribution to you!!!
{I’m eagerly awaiting Geosynchron}
Somehow the weblink for the Kurzweil interview in my last comment didn’t come through.
http://www.good.is/post/going-down-the-rabbit-hole/
Wow… Nice to know that there’s someone else out there who shares my same vision. Especially Kurzweil. I dig him. (Though I think the late 2020s is a little optimistic…)