Tremors Before the Quake

David Louis Edelman, whose novel Infoquake, which is "as imaginative as Dune and as real as today's Wall Street Journal," and which we are publishing in July, 06, now has a greatly-expanded, content rich site at www.jump225.com.

David has posted the first three chapters of the novel, as well as a glossary of terms, background articles on the technology and society of his world, press information, even a section of "further reading." Some of this material, such as the author's explaination for the question, "Why I wrote Infoquake," are exclusive to the website. Some of the other material constitutes the appedices of the book itself. It is these appendices which first sold me on publishing Infoquake to begin with. I was two chapters in, skipped ahead when I noticed them, and fell in love with the richness of the world he has constructed. Reading them, the Dune comparison became obvious, but comparisons to Asimov's Foundation and Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age also came to mind. (When he spoke about wanting to create a website in support of the book, I insisted on a special provision in his contract to allow the whole appendices to be uploaded.)

In particular, the author's historical timeline is not to be missed. Although David is a first time author, he brings with him an assured vision, as well as extensive experience in the dot com world, and his book is truly extraordinary. It is, as Chris Roberson styled it, "A new subgenre unto itself: the science fiction business thriller." I know that any time you do something completely different, you take a risk. Sometimes, even a genre as forward-looking as science fiction can be conservative in what it will embrace. Here is a novel with no shoot outs or space battles, but I promise you it has plenty of action, page-turning tension, politics, high stakes wheels and deals at all levels of power, battles to control world-altering technologies. It's everything science fiction is about, deeply steeped in its tradition, and still refreshingly other. I'm very proud to be presenting it as part of the Pyr line, and I do hope that you will check it out.