More Love for an Earlier Title

Speculative Book Review writes:

Infoquake has been compared to the classic novel Dune and the movie Wallstreet. This is a very good comparison, but I think that Infoquake stands on its own merits and allows us to envision a future that could quite possibly occur with a nudge in the right direction. The pacing and style of the novel leaves you wanting more as the book moves at break-neck speed from the corporate boardrooms to the public launch of a product. You would think that a science fiction book that focuses on the backstabbing and the planning of a new computer program would leave you yawning and sleepy, but Edelman has found a way to keep you reading way into the wee hours of the morning drinking coffee like a computer programmer behind on his product launch. A fascinating piece of literary work that is bound to be considered a classic of science fiction. One, if not THE top read of the year. A must have for any reader of science fiction. Could not recommend higher.

We Has Pyr Kindle

That's right. After what for me has been an interminably long period of "hurry up and wait," I woke up this morning to discover that our very first Pyr Kindle books have miraculously appeared. Five titles are available for download in the Kindle store. Oddly, it contains a second book in a series and a third book in a series, but I think these are just the first few to appear. There are a lot more coming in back of this, and the conversion process is on Amazon's end, so I expect we'll see more pop up in the near future as they get to them (and I'll report here as I see them.) And of course I'm happy to see that Fast Forward 1 is in this initial list of offerings.

The books:

Silver Screen

Starship: Pirate

Going Under (Quantum Gravity, Book 3)

Infoquake (Volume I of the Jump 225 trilogy)

Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge

Borderlands Books

Borderlands Books has added a totally cool feature to their homepage that shows a panoramic view of their store and allows you to zoom in. Not only do you get to see what a beautiful store it is (I miss it terribly), but using the zoom feature, you can get so close as to read the titles off individual spines. I, concerned editor that I am, was thrilled to immediately spot David Louis Edelman's Infoquake and MultiReal in a shelf along the left-side wall.

Two Out of Two Anders Agree: Infoquake/MultiReal is Brilliant!

Over on the Pyr blog, Mark Chadbourn asks "Should Scientists Forget Space?", citing an article on the UK's former Chief Scientist, Sir David King, who says that we are in need of a "re-think of priorities in science and technology and a redrawing of our society's inner attitudes towards science and technology." Sir King wants us to forgo experiments in space and in CERN in favor of addressing more immediate concerns at him. I've already given my opinion in the comments of Mark's post, but it's interesting to me to contrast it here with Charlie Jane Anders' io9.com review of David Louis Edelman's Infoquakeand MultiReal(books one and two of his Jump 225 trilogy).

Charlie Jane beings the review, which is titled "MultiReal is your antidote to science-bashing scifi," by saying, "With so much mass-media science fiction featuring anti-science heroes who battle to stop science from "going too far," it's great to read a really smart novel about a hero who's fighting to save scientific progress from being suppressed." She characterizes the books as being "about the nature of technological progress" and says, "Where MultiReal really shines, however, is in the debates over the ethics of this reality-twisting software. There really is no right answer to the question of how society should deal with software that 'liberates you from cause and effect,' and the sequence where Natch's mentor debates the government's attorneys is easily my favorite part of both books. It's a complex issue, and Edelman draws it out enough that you can see how it applies to today's real-life challenges: should we try to suppress new technologies, should we regulate them heavily? Is it possible to suppress new knowledge after all? Does information really want to be free? It's a lot more nuanced than the 'science iz scary OMG' idea that seems to be popular in media SF right now.

Now, with the understanding that I am generalizing horribly, I think that traditionally a majority of filmic sci-fi is concerned with maintaining the status quo and getting the genies back in the bottles. Something is developed, approaching, on the loose - and its up to the protagonists to stop it. An asteroid is going to hit the earth, aliens are invading, a man has turned himself invisible and is running amok - how do we divert it, repel them, contain him... In other words, there is a threat to consensus reality and by the end of the film or television show, it's been dealt with and nicely put away. Go on with your lives. Nothing to worry about here.

By contrast, literary science fiction is often set after such an event has already happened, sometimes a good deal after, and throws us in medias res into a world in which part of the fun of the narrative is working out how the world in the tale differs from the world we know and part of the theme lies in examining how these changes act as a lens to illuminate some aspect of humanity that we take for granted. So, an asteroid hit the earth and killed everyone over 18, how do the survivors cope? Aliens invaded and are now our overlords - would you let one date your sister? 1/3 of the population is invisible, what new class of people do they form? The intrusion isn't repelled, it's part and parcel of the way things are now going forward. I find this the more honest approach, and underscores on of science fiction's strengths as the genre that embraces the reality and inevitability of change.

There are, of course, examples of both approaches in both mediums. In fact, one of the (many) failures of The Matrix trilogy is that it began from what I'm calling a more literary position of science fiction and transitioned to the filmic. At the end of the first movie, Neo promises to hang up the phone and, "then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world ... without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible." The goal of the protagonists isn't to preserve consensual reality, but to destroy it, by ushering in a world where anyone can do the things he can. But instead of this, the subsequent films shift the emphasis radically away from the Matrix (which is never anything more than a set for agents and rebels to play in henceforth) to saving Zion and restoring the status quo of balance between machine and rebel. We never actually deal with another person who still believes in/is imprisoned by the Matrix's view of reality - and the battle that is fought is all about getting things back to the way they were in the first film. I don't know why this is, though the best explanation I've heard is that 9/11 occurred between the first and second films, forcing Warner to rethink the wisdom of making two more movies staring a group of admitted terrorists out to destroy 1999. (In some ways, V for Vendetta - which was released as public opinion was beginning to change re: the current war and Bush's approval ratings were dipping, and questioning him was no longer being seen as being unpatriotic - is the film the Wachowski's should have made out of Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions and didn't/couldn't at the time). But I digress...

To bring this back to the Jump 225 trilogy: What I personally love about Edelman is that he sets his story not before (and up to the point) of the radical transformation, nor after (and at a comfortable distance from) the transformation, but that he is actually charting the course through the societal singularity, showing how all the institutions of government, business, and society rearrange, realign, and topple. To an extent, Charlie Stross did this with his brilliant and essential Accelerando (though he moves his action off-world for a good deal of it - which is no criticism, it's a different animal), but I've never personally encountered a work that did such a thorough job and concentrated so much of its focus in taking us through the shift point between paradigms. I think that's why so many readers say that the future Edelman presents is a "believable" one, and why I think, though he mixes and matches tropes we've seen before, his approach is so unique.

David Louis Edelman: At a Romantic Dead End?

The wonderful Rob H. Bedford interviews Infoquakeand MultiRealauthor David Louis Edelman for SFFWorld today.

In light of old discussions about writing for the opposite gender, I particularly appreciated this bit:

Did you find Jara’s voice more difficult to capture than Natch’s, considering, well, you are a man and Jara is a woman?

Honestly, I feel like I understand Jara better than I understand Natch. He’s somewhat difficult and remote, and he’s not really like me at all. Jara is much easier to relate to. She’s approaching middle age, she’s fed up with her career, she’s sexually unfulfilled, and she’s hit a romantic dead end. I know plenty of people, male and female, who fit those descriptions. So I didn’t worry too much about gender differences. I just tried to make her a well-rounded character.

And this bit made me laugh:

If you could take any pre-existing fictional character and plunk them into the events of the Jump 225 trilogy, who would it be?

Dr. Strange. He’s a guy who hops dimensions all the time. He ought to know how to handle MultiReal.

But you should read it all, right?

Infoquake: Volatile, Complex and Very, Very Realistic

I just noticed that Colleen R. Cahill has suddenly reviewed David Louis Edelman's Infoquakefor Fast Forward, (the local cable TV show devoted to science fiction based in the Washington, DC area, not my anthology series of the same name). Colleen praises the world-building, which rather than being a dystopia or a utopia, is realistic enough to encapsulate both. Although she doesn't invoke it, her split the middle future reminds me of Warren Ellis' comic book Transmetropolitan,which I always loved for the way it presented the future as neither wonderful nor terrible but both simultaneously (you can be genetically engineered to swim with dolphins for a day, in a world where poor Irish children are sold as food). This sort of all-too-believable future is what drew me to Infoquake to begin with, though I agree with Colleen when she says, "As interesting as his world is, it is Edelman's characters that make this book shine. Natch might be good at bio/logics, but he mostly seems motivated by revenge: as his friend Horvil points out, Natch only seems to succeed when he is beating someone else. The interactions between Natch, Horvil and Jara (who is both attracted to and disturbed by her boss) are volatile, complex and very, very realistic. It is easy to believe in these people, and even feel like maybe this is a future that is not too far away."

I'm glad Collen stressed the strength of Dave's characters, because sometimes I think people in the SF genre have a hard time with protagonists who do bad things. I don't know why this is - though I suspect it stems from decades of conditioning in SF television, all the way back to Roddenberry and his attempts to have drama without interpersonal conflict. And the strange pressures of a society that want its basketball players, boxers, and rock stars to be role models as well. You know, when you look back at classic "heroes", all the way back to the Greeks, they are a pretty flawed bunch, and it's their flaws, as much as their strengths, that give us such wonderful narratives. I love Natch, because, hey, I've worked for Natch. And because I think brilliant-but-flawed and obsessively-driven people are fascinating (Batman, Spock, James Bond, the aforementioned Spider Jerusalem, many more....) In the meantime, SF television has certainly come along, with post-HBO shows like Battlestar Galactica. But I still think some people conflate interesting with admirable. A character need only be the former, not the latter. Of course, a well-rounded character can move from one to the other too, and remember, I've already read MultiReal.

News Worth Repeating

From a Press Release, as reported on the Solaris Books website:

Christian Dunn of Solaris Books is excited to announce the acquisition of world mass-market rights for INFOQUAKE by David Louis Edelman, in a high-profile deal with Pyr, the SF/F imprint of Prometheus Books.

• Barnes & Noble's SF Book of the Year for 2006
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award Nominee for Best Novel 2006

INFOQUAKE takes speculative fiction into alien territory: the corporate boardroom of the far future. It’s a stunning trip through the trenches of a technological war fought with product demos, press releases and sales pitches. INFOQUAKE is truly science fiction for the twenty-first century.

Natch, a master of bio/logics, the programming of the human body, has clawed his way to the top of the market using little more than his wits. His notoriety brings him to the attention of the owner of MultiReal, a mysterious new technology. Only by enlisting Natch’s devious mind can MultiReal be kept out of the hands of High Executive Len Borda and his ruthless armies. Meanwhile, hanging over everything is the specter of the infoquake, a lethal burst of energy that’s disrupting networks and threatening to send the world crashing back into the Dark Ages.

DAVID LOUIS EDELMAN said: “I’m ecstatic to see a new mass-market edition of Infoquake from Solaris. All authors want to see their books in front of a larger audience, as long as they don’t have to sacrifice their integrity to do it. With a massmarket edition through Solaris, my book is getting the best of both worlds: wider exposure and first-class treatment from guys who really care about science fiction.”

INFOQUAKE will be published by SOLARIS in both the UK and the US in Summer 2008, alongside the Pyr trade edition of MULTIREAL, the second book in the Jump 225 trilogy.

David Louis Edelman is a web designer, programmer and journalist. He lives with his wife Victoria near Washington, DC. Over the past ten years, Mr. Edelman has programmed websites for the U.S. Army and the FBI, taught software to the U.S. Congress and the World Bank, written articles for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, and directed the marketing departments of biometric and e-commerce companies. Mr. Edelman was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1971 and grew up in Orange County, California. He received a B.A. in creative writing and journalism from The Johns Hopkins University in 1993. Visit www.infoquake.net for extracts, information and more.

Praise for INFOQUAKE:

"The love child of Donald Trump and Vernor Vinge." - B&N Explorations

"This may be THE science fiction book of the year." - SFFWorld

"Bursting with invention and panache." - Publishers Weekly

"Like a more accessible Charles Stross." - Intergalactic Medicine Show

"A high-speed, high-spirited tale of capitalist skullduggery." - Asimov's

"Read this book, and then argue about it." - Kate Elliott

“So fresh and good I shamelessly stole an idea from it... Give him the Philip K. Dick award.” - Ian McDonald

For more information please contact BL Publishing on: solaris@blpublishing.com
or call George Mann on ++44 (0)115 - 900 4172

www.solarisbooks.com

Infoquake Nominated for John W. Campbell Award

I cannot begin to express how thrilled I am with this news: David Louis Edelman's debut novel Infoquake has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel!

And remember, this follows Infoquake being chosen as the # 1 book in the Barnes & Noble Editor's Choice: Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006. Pyr books (and its editor) have picked up nominations now for the Hugo, World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick and Independent Publisher awards as well. Plus, while a lot of our authors already have a history of nominations and wins for prior work, this is David's first major award nomination, so we are just tickled pink for him.

For those who haven't read Dave's masterpiece yet, check out the website, where he has uploaded around 30,000 words of content from the book. Along with a timeline, a glossary, and host of background articles on the world of Infoquake, you can read the first seven chapters online there, or listen to the first four chapters on audio.

The award will be presented during the Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Congratulations to David and to all the nominees.

Infoquake: A Dangerous Vision?

David Louis Edelman's Infoquake has racked up praise beyond my wildest expectation, being called "a triumph of speculation" by Bookgasm (who listed it in their top five novels of 2006) and "the science fiction book of the year" by SFFWorld. It prompted Ian McDonald to proclaim, "So fresh and good I shamelessly stole an idea from it: the whole premise of a future corporate thriller.... Buy Infoquake, read it.... Give him the Philip K Dick award." Alas, they did not, but Barnes & Noble chose it as the number one book of the year in their list of the Top SF&F Books of 2006. Needless to say, we are more than thrilled. (And hey, there's still the Locus poll.)

But it's this review in the April/May 2007 issue of Asimov's, that may be the most interesting analysis of the book that I've read thus far. In the latest of his always enjoyable On Books columns, "Whither the Hard Stuff?", Norman Spinrad praises Infoquake as a "high-speed, high-spirited tale of high-powered and low-minded capitalist skullduggery, corporate and media warfare, and virtual reality manipulation. It’s the sort of thing that would make a perfect serial for Wired magazine, given the nature of its ad base, if it ever decided to publish fiction."

He further praises Edelman for his skill in crafting hard SF, saying "Edelman seems to have convincing and convincingly detailed knowledge of the physiology and biochemistry of the human nervous system down to the molecular level. And cares about making his fictional combination of molecular biology and nanotech credible to the point where the hard science credibility of the former makes the questionable nature of the latter seem more credible even to a nanotech skeptic like me. And after all, let’s not kid ourselves too far, that’s really the nature of the hard science fiction game; otherwise it wouldn’t be hard science fiction."

Here I have to warn you there's a spoiler in the review as to what the MacGuffin of the book is (or seems to be), but Spinrad finds all of this struggle for verisimilitude erected around a core concept that he feels is a "'doorway into anything'—superpowers conjured up at will out of the bits and bytes, infinite replay of actions in order to come up with the desired result—in other words, magic" to be disturbing. Yes, disturbing!

He concludes, "I have no quarrel at all with the use of magic as a literary device in fantasy or surrealist fiction, where it has produced masterpieces. Magic masquerading as science and/or technology is another matter, and a graver one. And the better the masquerade, the more successful on a literary level, the more disturbing the transliterary consequences."

Unfortunately, or fortunately, or both, I doubt a great many of today's readers will get hot under the collar about "transliterary consequences," a state of affairs that is part of the lament of Spinrad's broader article. As he says, "Literarily and commercially, the question of whether or not such a novel could be considered 'hard science fiction of the post-modern kind' is ridiculously irrelevant. " But it is nice to imagine a world where the debate might reach titanic proportions, like the shouting matches once provoked by the New Wave. I'd love to hear reports from Nippon 2007 that there were knock down drag outs between the Mundanistas and the Infoquakers. As well as constituting a healthy sign of the state of SF, that would be high praise indeed.

David Louis Edelman on NPR this Sunday

David Louis Edelman, author of Infoquake, which, did I mention, B&N.com just picked as the # 1 SF novel of the year in their Editor's Choice: Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006 - is scheduled to be on NPR's Weekend Edition this Sunday, in a feature report from the Agony Column's Rick Kleffel which also includes such notables as TC Boyle, Jeff VanderMeer, Charlie Stross, Amir D. Aczel...and John Carpenter's THEY LIVE.

As Rick says, "Not Your Usual NPR Lineup. Not anyone's usual lineup for that matter." Reportedly, the chances are that the piece will air in the second hour of Weekend Edition.

Update: The piece, entitled "Writers Find New Fiction Source in Economic Genre" is now online at NPR.org, where it is available in both RealAudio and Windows Media formats.

Update 2: Rick Kleffel emailed to say that the piece was in the top twenty-five of NPR's "Most Emailed" list until today (1/10/07) and that this is "quite a long time" for a piece to stay on the list. Hopefully this will lead to more SFnal reports on NPR. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the news! Meanwhile, Rick has uploaded a DRM-free MP3 version of the piece to his website, the Agony Column. BoingBoing also gave the piece a mention. We're the "and others."

Pyr makes 3 of B&N.com's Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006

I'm very pleased to announce that B&N.com has just picked three titles for inclusion in their Editor's Choice Top Ten SF&F Novels of 2006 list, prompting our publicity department to issue the following press release:

For Immediate Release

January 3, 200

"The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Story of the Year"
Several Year-End "Bests"Cap 2006 for SF&F Imprint
Including Barnes & Noble's SF&F Book of the Year!

Amherst, NY — Barnes & Noble online today posted their Editor’s Choice lists for the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2006. Three books by Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books, are in this Top Ten Novels of 2006 list, including the top spot!

The Barnes & Noble Science Fiction/Fantasy Book of the Year, Editor’s Choice, is Infoquake by David Louis Edelman—a debut that ingeniously mixes business with pleasure, or as B&N puts it, “equal parts corporate thriller, technophilic cautionary tale and breathtakingly visionary science fiction adventure.”

The other two Pyr books included in this best of the year list are The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams at number four (“prepare to be blown away,” they write) and Resolution, the conclusion to John Meaney’s three-book Nulapeiron Sequence, at number six.

The UK bookseller Waterstone's also included two Pyr titles on their list of Top Ten SF for 2006: Crossover by Joel Shepherd and Paragaea by Chris Roberson.

Publishing blog Bookgasm posted a Best 5 Sci-Fi Books of 2006 list in which three of the best five books were from Pyr. River of Godsby Ian McDonald topped their list at number one, while Infoquake by David Louis Edelman and Crossover (both first novels) tied for fifth.

According to the science fiction and fantasy reviewer for Bookgasm,

"The biggest story of the year…is Pyr’s rise to prominence as a high-quality sci-fi imprint. Pyr has managed to round up a stable of authors and titles that represents the cutting edge of sci-fi and backs it up with promotion and marketing that pretty much outdoes the other imprints out there. Bravo, Pyr. Here’s hoping for an even greater 2007."

The imprint will certainly do its best to make 2007 even greater than 2006:

In February, Pyr will launch a new hard science fiction anthology series, Fast Forward 1, dedicated to presenting the vanguard of the genre and charting the undiscovered country that is the future. In March, Pyr will publish Keeping It Real, the first of Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity titles that are being hailed as her “breakout” books—the most entertaining, fun, and commercial of her novels to date. Promotion for Keeping it Real includes a special music track by The No Shows (www.thenoshows.com)—the hottest rock band of 2021.

In May, it’s “Bladerunner in the tropics” with Brasyl by Ian McDonald, the writer the Washington Post said is “becoming one of the best sf novelists of our time.” McDonald moves from India (River of Gods) to past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling.

Pyr has already begun developing a reputation for publishing “smart” science fiction. But in September 2007, Pyr gets fantastic with its first straight-up commercial epic fantasy novel: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. This book will lead Pyr’s Fall-Winter 07-08 season and be launched at Book Expo America in June 2007.

In other 2006 year-end awards, the blog Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist called Pyr “a breath of fresh air in both the fantasy and science fiction genres” and gave the imprint the creatively named and gratefully accepted “Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Award.”

Pyr Makes 3 of Bookgasm's Top 5 (point five) & 3 of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist Top 10 Novels of 2006

Bookgasm has posted their list of the 5 Best Sci-Fi Books of 2006.

David Louis Edelman's Infoquakeand Joel Shepherd's Crossovertie for fifth place. And, in a list that includes Tobias S. Buckell, Kim Stanley Robinson, and John Scalzi, the number one spot is given to Ian McDonald's River of Gods.

Of Infoquake and Crossover, Ryun Patterson writes:

"This pair of books is a great example of what Pyr is doing right. Infoquake is a tech-heavy exercise in scientific speculation that combines economics, high technology and business mechanics into an all-too-human story of greed, loss and redemption. Crossover isn’t satisfied with being just another hot-chick-android-assassin book and goes for some heavy-duty characterization (not unlike what’s been going on in TV’s Battlestar Galactica) that makes the kicking ass that much more tremendous."

As to River of Gods:

"It’s at once cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk, awash in the verbiage of globalization and emerging-markets uncertainty. As the story’s huge cast of characters tumbles toward their individual destinies in tomorrow’s India, it’s hard to believe that McDonald doesn’t have a time machine stored somewhere in his backyard..."

And they open the list with this comment about the Pyr imprint:

"The biggest story of the year, in my opinion, is Pyr’s rise to prominence as a high-quality sci-fi imprint. Pyr has managed to round up a stable of authors and titles that represents the cutting edge of sci-fi and backs it up with promotion and marketing that pretty much outdoes the other imprints out there. Bravo, Pyr. Here’s hoping for an even greater 2007."

Congratulations to all six authors. On this end, we'll certainly do our best to make 2007 even better than 2006.

Update: Three must be a magic number, because Pat's Fantasy Hotlist has just posted their Top Ten Novels of 2006, and once again Pyr is on the list with three titles.

Ian McDonald's River of Gods comes in at # 4.
Joel Shepherd's Crossover is # 7.
And Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter is # 9.

Pyr is also given the "Best Thing Since Sliced Bread Award", with the comment that we are "a breath of fresh air in both the fantasy and science fiction genres."