Infoquake

The New Cover for “Infoquake”

As I mentioned the other day when I unveiled the final cover for “MultiReal,” the great Stephan Martiniere is also doing the cover for Solaris’ mass market paperback release of “Infoquake.” Well, wait no longer. Here’s the final version of the new cover.

“Infoquake”: It’s Back

I’m still reeling from this news, which I just heard about literally 20 minutes ago… but it appears that Solaris Books has just inked a deal with Pyr to release a mass-market paperback edition of “Infoquake.”

“MultiReal”: It’s Done

'MultiReal' manuscriptThe photo you see here is the completed manuscript of my second novel, MultiReal, the sequel to Infoquake. It’s been somewhere around three years in the making, and now it’s done.

The book measures 477 pages, or about 148,000 words (including appendices). There are 6 sections, 45 chapters, and 8 appendices. The opening epigraph comes from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The tagline? “Infinite possibility is only a state of mind.”

Now, when I say the book is done, of course that doesn’t mean it’s absolutely, completely done. That means it’s going off to my editor at Pyr, Lou Anders, for any last-minute comments. I’ll be printing out another copy of the book for myself and giving it a last read-through with red pen in hand. I’ll be incorporating those changes by the end of the month — and then the book goes off to the copy editor. But I expect the changes to be pretty minor from this point on.

(Want to know how finicky I am? The printouts after the jump below showing some of my line edits to MultiReal are from the fourth complete draft of the book.)

Here’s an example of the kind of changes I’m talking about. I discovered yesterday that, after who knows how many read-throughs and rewrites, in chapter 45 one of my characters was “threading her way through the throngs of Thasselians.” I’ll admit I’m not always above allocating an assortment of alliteration in my writing, but this one was totally unintentional. And it sounded ridiculous, so it needed to be fixed. (The even more ridiculous part is that I had misspelled “throngs” as “thongs.” Freudian slip?)

So having completed the book, I can definitely say this: you have never, ever read a book like MultiReal before.

MultiReal might be the most exciting book you’ve ever read that contains both a series of Congressional speeches and a three-way dartgun battle. It has both a granular discussion about the ethics of different software pricing models and a virtual sex scene with four-breasted mermaids.

To give you an idea of how complex this book is, chew on this: there are three main point-of-view characters, three minor point-of-view characters, one chapter in epistolary form, and one chapter from the global omniscient point of view. The prose slips from past to present tense a few times. You’re going to learn that one important piece of history mentioned in Infoquake didn’t quite happen the way you think it happened. Some of the characters speak in code. More than one have double allegiances. Oh, and have I mentioned the multiple, alternate, simultaneous, and asynchronous realities?

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The Ever-Expanding Brand

News flash: Starbucks expanded too fast.

Or at least, so says Starbucks founder Howard Schultz in a memo that circulated on the Internet recently. The chain went from 1,000 to 13,000 locations in a decade. As a result, Starbucks has gone from the epitome of cool — which it really was, back when grunge was the hip thing — to, well, Starbucks. I think I literally pass about 15 Starbucks on my way to work in the morning, and those are just the ones that are within half a mile of the highway.

And yet, it’s easy to forget that Starbucks practically invented the modern coffeehouse. When I was in high school, there were no hip coffeehouses to hang out in. If you wanted to hang out and gab with your friends in a public place, you went to the mall. If you wanted to drink coffee, there was the Folger’s brand dreck you buy at the supermarket, or there were fancy-schmancy imported European brands. The first Starbucks were a revelation. Great coffee, great eye for design, quirky attitude, and socially responsible too! (Or so we believed then.)

Daniel Gross wrote a fascinating piece in the L.A. Times this weekend about companies, like Starbucks, that expand too quickly and sacrifice their brand magic. Other case studies of the trend, according to the article, include Krispy Kreme, Restoration Hardware, Snapple, and California Pizza Kitchen. All once exclusive — nay, magical — consumer experiences, all blanded down by Wall Street’s push for ever-expanding profits. Remember the first time you walked into Restoration Hardware? It was awesome. Now? Not so much. I might add to this list The Sharper Image, Tower Records, Boston Market, the Olive Garden, TGI Friday’s, and IKEA.

Extend the concept to television, and you’ve got Seinfeld, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and Star Trek. Film franchises? All I have to say is that Lethal Weapon was considered edgy on its release in 1987. The Batman and Superman series fell into self-parody and both needed expensive reboots. (Star Trek is supposedly next in line for a reboot, with Matt Damon, Adrien Brody, and Gary Sinise reportedly in line to play the young Kirk, Spock, and Bones. I kid you not.) Books? I would argue that Orson Scott Card has screwed the pooch on the marvelous Ender series with his increasingly wretched (and seemingly endless) series of Bean books and tie-in stories. (I could even go so far as to suggest the United States is subject to this phenomenon as well, but I don’t feel like getting political today.)

I wrote about this phenomenon in Infoquake. In fact, this arc of rise, bloat, and fall is one of the principle themes of the Jump 225 Trilogy. It seems to me that this is simply the way the world works. Brands, like people, like companies, like everything, are only allotted so much time on this Earth. Marketplace pressures demand that they expand quickly, and then the same marketplace pressures will pull them back down again. Nobody has yet found the magical formula to extend a company indefinitely, just like nobody has yet found the magical formula to extend people indefinitely.

Think of the brands that have stood the test of time. Coke, Sears, J.C. Penney, Ford, KMart. The only reason Coke continues its market domination, I’m convinced, is because of the virtual monopoly on the soda industry it shares with Pepsi, and that mostly has to do with distribution. There’s not a major stadium or movie theater chain or fast food franchise in America that doesn’t carry either Coke or Pepsi products. Give consumers a real choice and I’m betting that many of them would opt for R.C. or Virgin. Sears and Penney’s will soon go the way of Montgomery Ward, and Ford’s and KMart’s futures aren’t exactly looking promising.

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A Preview of “MultiReal,” the Sequel to “Infoquake”

Today I’ve reached a milestone. I’ve finished what I’m labeling the fourth draft of MultiReal, the sequel to Infoquake. The book still has some rewriting to do before I let it out into the world for the public’s delectation. But if MultiReal were a piece of software, you’d call it “feature complete.” Meaning it has all the bells and whistles that will exist in the final version, even if some of them still have some rough edges.

Here are some things you can expect to see when MultiReal finally hits the shelves:

  • The death of at least one (and possibly two) major characters
  • The return of the group in black robes, and the answer to the question of who was behind the black code attack on Natch
  • A hands-on demonstration of how an enraged Islander delivers smackdown justice (hint: you need a big-ass Islander shock baton)
  • Many more details about the MultiReal program, including what happens when two users pit MultiReal programs against one another
  • A vicious power struggle between Natch and Jara for control over the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp
  • The hidden truth behind the death of Marcus Surina and the onset of the Economic Plunge of the 310s
  • The introduction of several new pivotal characters, including:
    • Magan Kai Lee, Len Borda’s right-hand man
    • Papizon, Rey Gonerev and Ridgello, Magan’s loyal aides
    • Khann Frejohr, the newly elected speaker of the Congress of L-PRACGs
    • Pierre Loget, bio/logic programmer and rival to Natch
    • Geronimo, some anonymous dimwit who looks almost exactly like Natch
    • Berilla, the infamous queen bee of Horvil and Ben’s family
  • More slippery dealings by Frederic and Petrucio Patel
  • A look at what the Defense and Wellness Council is really up to, including several chapters from the POV of Len Borda and Magan Kai Lee
  • Scenes set on the virtual sex gratification network known as the Sigh, and a nice fat appendix about the workings of that network which will probably frighten my wife when she reads it
  • Chapters set in:
    • Old Chicago, a bombed-out city now inhabited mainly by the diss
    • Melbourne, the city of the central government
    • D-WeCC, the hidden headquarters of the Defense and Wellness Council
    • London, locale of Berilla’s cavernous West End estate
  • A look at the inner workings of the Prime Committee, including a section that does for governmental hearings what Infoquake did for product demos
  • An explanation from Brone about how MultiReal is pivotal to his impending “Revolution of Selfishness”
  • A climactic scene full of surprises, dartgun battles, double-crossings, quick escapes, and multiple realities
  • Another set of appendices exploring the world of the Jump 225 trilogy, and a thorough synopsis of the events of Infoquake

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“Infoquake”: The Bad Reviews

I’ve noticed a few other authors posting links to bad reviews of their novels on their websites. By bad reviews, I don’t mean poorly written or incomprehensible reviews — I mean reviews that tear your book a new asshole. I mean reviews that compare your book unfavorably to various types of animal dung. There’s one site I visited recently where the author had three columns displaying the “good,” the “bad,” and the “ugly” reviews of his work.

I always thought this behavior was kind of peculiar. We’re all aware that no single book will please everybody. I’ve eagerly pressed copies of Dune and Neuromancer into the hands of intelligent, well-read, open-minded people who later told me these were lousy books. So obviously, even if your novel emits white light and a heavenly choir chants every time you crack it open, there are going to be people who think it sucks big time. Why emphasize the negative?

Infoquake Book CoverI think I’ve discovered now why authors do that.

Imagine you’re sitting in the Coliseum in ancient Rome and two gladiators come out of the pen. One of them’s slick and unblemished with hardly a mark on him. The other guy’s got scars all over his arms and he’s missing a few teeth. Which one are you gonna bet on? I’m betting on the guy with the scars. Why? Because a scar is evidence of a tough fight that you came out of alive. It’s a mark of experience. And when we see the clean and unmarked gladiator, we just don’t believe that this guy has gone through fight after fight without making a single mistake. We figure that he’s just too young and green to have earned his scars yet.

It’s the same thing with being a novelist. If you haven’t had people dislike your novel, either a) you’ve accomplished something that nobody on this Earth has yet accomplished, or b) not enough people have read your book yet.

Lately I’ve been seeing some negative reviews of Infoquake cropping up on the web, and I’m in the mood to show them off like a gladiator shows off his scars. There was a rush of great reviews for the book when it first came out, and I’ve been wondering how much those reviews colored other people’s readings. I wonder how many people picked up Infoquake because they had heard good things about it, and were tremendously disappointed, but just didn’t feel like bucking the trend.

So I’m going to list here some of the bad reactions I’ve read over the web and some of the bad comments I’ve heard about the novel. (Of course, I encourage you to sample some of the reviews from the praise page to balance out the criticism.)

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Winners of the Jewish Marxist Werewolves in Bolivia Giveaway

It’s Sunday, January 21, the weather is turning cold, and there’s a full moon out tonight. Maybe not on this planet, but somewhere in the galaxy, I’m confident there is indeed a full moon.

What does this mean? This means that the Jewish Marxist Werewolves of Bolivia are out in force.

Jewish werewolf with yarmulke reading the TorahI received several great entries for this contest to win a signed copy of Infoquake. It was actually quite difficult to choose the winners, since some of you appeared to have really, really gotten into this. I’d like to think you were inspired by zeal for winning a copy of Infoquake, but I’m afraid it probably had more to do with some of you missing required doses of your medications.

But a hearty thanks to all who entered and provided me with some much-needed giggling. And now, the winners:

First Prize Winner: Josh Vogt.

Mr. Vogt actually submitted two prizeworthy entries to the contest, and I’m not entirely sure which one I liked better. I gave the crown to this one, for two reasons: (1) the phony Dune-like epigraph at the beginning is priceless, and (2) the second entry didn’t really mention Bolivia.

And the rabbi was lying on a mountain of ash and stones
with a ravenous mouth and staring pupils,
and in his soul there was silence and darkness and nothing more.
—an excerpt from Der Volf, by H. Leivick

As I adjust my tallit, the wolf yowls within me and peers through my eyes at an infant in its mother’s arms, as she sits in the recesses of the synagogue. A crunchy morsel, juicy on the outside, crunchy on the inside.

I curse the demon to silence. It’s just before sundown on Yom Kippur, and I must recite the Kol Nidre and escape before I slaughter everyone gathered for the evening prayers.

The wolf snarls and paces the cage of my ribs, gnawing them one at a time. Sometimes I wonder if wolves, rather than humans, were made in God’s image. Certainly we’re no better than beasts as we have turned on each other here in La Paz — gorging on the weaker, and then submitting to the stronger as they clamp their jaws around our hairy throats.

I should mention that Josh is a budding science fiction writer with a story recently sold to Shimmer and a novel being shopped around by his agent. Josh’s website: www.jrvogt.com.

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