Jump 225

The Agony Column on “MultiReal”

Just happened to catch the latest Agony Column from the incomparable Rick Kleffel, and he’s chosen to headline today with a brief look at “MultiReal.” I’m unclear whether Rick has actually read the book yet, but he’s taken the occasion to say some nice things about the Jump 225 trilogy in general.

The “Infoquake” Mass Market Has Arrived

I am extraordinarily proud to give you the first look at the mass market version of Infoquake, the first copy of which arrived in my mailbox yesterday. It’s back from the printers quite a bit earlier than I expected, considering the official release date isn’t until June, but that’s the publishing business for you. At least I managed to get the matching redesigned website up first.

Here are the front and back covers. (Forgive the lousy Treo camera pics and the even lousier attempts to brighten up the lousy Treo camera pics in Photoshop.)

Infoquake mass market in hand

The mass market edition of Infoquake is being published by Solaris Books, the folks who also recently published my story “Mathralon” in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two.

And they’ve done a bang-up job of it too — this thing looks sharp. Not only is the cover art by Stephan Martiniere crisp and stunning, but Infoquake might be one of the few books that will catch just as much attention when the spine’s facing out as the cover. It’s hard to tell from the pics above, but you can read the title on the spine from across the room. Plus the book has a nice weight and thickness to it, and it tickles my vanity by opening with several pages of rave quotes from authors and reviewers. (Not as many pages of rave quotes as the mass market of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, but one can’t set the bar too high.)

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Read Chapters 1-5 of “MultiReal” in the Pyr Sampler

Interested in reading chapters 1-5 of my new novel MultiReal, a good three and a half months before the book’s in stores? Now’s your chance. Pyr has just released a 326-page sampler (PDF, 3.5 MB) of its upcoming titles for the spring and summer, and the first 45 pages or so of MultiReal are in it. Keep your eye out at science fiction conventions if you want to get your hands on a paper copy, … Read more

Building the Perfect User Interface (Part 1)

When I set out to create the world for my Jump 225 Trilogy, as I’ve written elsewhere, I started with a few technological principles:

  1. Imagine that we have virtually inexhaustible sources of energy.
  2. Imagine that we have virtually unlimited computing power.
  3. Imagine that enough time has passed to allow the scientists to adequately take advantage of these things.

I discovered that starting from these basic principles, there are almost unlimited possibilities. You can easily have a world that’s intermeshed with virtual reality. You can create vast computational systems that have billions and billions of self-directing software programs. You can have pliable architecture that automatically adjusts to fit the needs of the people using it. And so on. It’s actually fairly easy to figure out a technological solution to just about any problem if you don’t have those constraints.

science-fiction-machine.jpgThe interesting questions in such a world, then, are questions of interface. You don’t bother to discuss if you can accomplish your goal anymore, because the answer is almost always “yes.” You just need to know how you’re going to accomplish it, and who’s going to pay for it, and what happens when your perfectly achievable goal clashes with someone else’s perfectly achievable goal.

In other words: you’re at point A. You’d like to be at point B. How do you go about getting there?

Note that when I’m talking about user interface, I’m not talking about how you actually get from point A to point B. The interesting thing about this whole new science of interface is that it doesn’t really matter. We can treat all kinds of science and engineering as a simple black box and just skip right over it. What I’m really concerned with at the moment is how human beings translate their desires into actions in the physical world. How do you tell the black box you want to go from point A to point B?

It seems like a ridiculously easy question, but turns out it’s not. Let’s just take a very simple example of a black box that we all know: the toaster. You might think we already have the perfect user interface for toasting bread. You stick bread in a toaster. There’s one big lever that turns the sucker on, and a dial that tells you how dark you want the toast. How can you improve on that?

Well, wait just a second — the desire we’re trying to accomplish here is to take ordinary bread and turn it into toast. And if you think of user interface as the way you go about accomplishing this, the user interface for toasting bread is much more complicated than you might think.

You need to buy a machine to do the toasting, and you need to plug that machine into a power socket. (The right kind of socket for your part of the world.) And not only do you need a bulky machine that takes up counter space, but you need a dedicated machine that really does nothing else but toast bread and the very small number of specialty foods designed to fit in toaster slots. If you’re trying to toast bread in my house, you need to know that the toaster and the microwave are plugged into the same outlet, and using them at the same time will blow the fuse. You need to experiment with every new toaster you buy to find exactly the right setting — and yet, chances are that you burn toast at least once every couple months. How inefficient is all that?

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The Final Cover for “MultiReal”

I mentioned that Pyr was moving in a new direction for the “MultiReal” cover art. Well, feast your eyes on the final cover of “MultiReal,” hitting bookshelves early summer 2008.

“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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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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