David Louis Edelman

For Your Viewing Pleasure: Geosynchron

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Cover Illustration © Stephan Martiniere
Design by Jacqueline Cooke

The Defense and Wellness Council is enmeshed in full-scale civil war between Len Borda and the mysterious Magan Kai Lee. Quell has escaped from prison and is stirring up rebellion in the Islands with the aid of a brash young leader named Josiah. Jara and the apprentices of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp still find themselves fighting off legal attacks from their competitors and from Margaret Surina’s unscrupulous heirs — even though MultiReal has completely vanished.

The quest for the truth will lead to the edges of civilization, from the tumultuous society of the Pacific Islands to the lawless orbital colony of 49th Heaven; and through the deeps of time, from the hidden agenda of the Surina family to the real truth behind the Autonomous Revolt that devastated humanity hundreds of years ago.

Meanwhile, Natch has awakened in a windowless prison with nothing but a haze of memory to clue him in as to how he got there. He’s still receiving strange hallucinatory messages from Margaret Surina and the nature of reality is buckling all around him. When the smoke clears, Natch must make the ultimate decision – whether to save a world that has scorned and discarded him, or to save the only person he has ever loved: himself.

Coming February 2010

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Blood of Ambrose is Joe Mallozzi’s Book of the Month for July

Stargate writer/producer, avid reader, and all around great guy Joe Mallozzi has announced his June and July selections for his Book Club reads. For those who don’t know, Joe picks one or more titles a month, invites his many fans to read them along with him, and then invites the authors in for a lengthy Q&A. I had the honor to be the first such guest, but he’s gone on to have scores of authors on, including our own Justina Robson, David Louis Edelman, and Joe Abercrombie, as well as our friend & frequent cover artist John Picacio. Now, he’s chosen James Enge’s Blood of Ambrosefor his July selection, and before that, our friend Michael Moorcock’s Elric: The Stealer of Souls,(the new Del Rey edition with the fabulous interior artwork by John Picacio). Both great choices and I’m excited to see the interviews with both authors. Meanwhile, Enge himself is over the moon to be in the same post with Moorcock. Who wouldn’t be?

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For Your Viewing Pleasure: David Louis Edelman’s Geosynchron

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Cover Illustration © Stephan Martiniere
Design by Jacqueline Cooke
Coming February 2010


DAVID LOUIS EDELMAN’S BUSINESS SCIENCE FICTION SAGA THAT BEGAN WITH INFOQUAKE AND MULTIREAL COMES TO A STUNNING CONCLUSION WITH GEOSYNCHRON, THE LAST BOOK OF THE JUMP 225 TRILOGY.

The Defense and Wellness Council is enmeshed in full-scale civil war between Len Borda and the mysterious Magan Kai Lee. Quell has escaped from prison and is stirring up rebellion in the Islands with the aid of a brash young leader named Josiah. Jara and the apprentices of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp still find themselves fighting off legal attacks from their competitors and from Margaret Surina’s unscrupulous heirs — even though MultiReal has completely vanished.

The quest for the truth will lead to the edges of civilization, from the tumultuous society of the Pacific Islands to the lawless orbital colony of 49th Heaven; and through the deeps of time, from the hidden agenda of the Surina family to the real truth behind the Autonomous Revolt that devastated humanity hundreds of years ago.

Meanwhile, Natch has awakened in a windowless prison with nothing but a haze of memory to clue him in as to how he got there. He’s still receiving strange hallucinatory messages from Margaret Surina and the nature of reality is buckling all around him. When the smoke clears, Natch must make the ultimate decision — whether to save a world that has scorned and discarded him, or to save the only person he has ever loved: himself.

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Too Much Pyr News to Keep Track of!

You go out of town for a week, and look what happens:

Ian McDonald’s Brasylhas made the short list for the Nebula Awards!! Meanwhile over on Boing Boing, fellow-nominee Cory Doctorow (Little Brother) reviews Ian McDonald’s Cyberabad Days:

“Ian McDonald is one of science fiction’s finest working writers, and his latest short story collection Cyberabad Days, is the kind of book that showcases exactly what science fiction is for. …Cyberabad Days has it all: spirituality, technology, humanity, love, sex, war, environmentalism, politics, media — all blended together to form a manifesto of sorts, a statement about how technology shapes and is shaped by all the wet, gooey human factors. Every story is simultaneously a cracking yarn, a thoughtful piece of technosocial criticism, and a bag of eyeball kicks that’ll fire your imagination. The field is very lucky to have Ian McDonald working in it.”

And Nick Gevers interviews McDonald on SciFi Wire:

“The title Cyberabad Days is a deliberate echo of the Arabian Nights. The stories are fairy tales of New Delhi. River was an Indian—novel, fat, many-voiced, wide-screen; Cyberabad Days is tales. Mumbai movies tell stories in ways that challenge our Western aesthetics and values. They’re not afraid of sentiment, they’re not afraid of big acting, or putting in song and dance, because Bollywood cinema’s not supposed to be a mimetic art form. It’s not about realism—that most pernicious of Western values—it’s a show.”

On io9, Charlie Jane Anders interviews Infoquakeand MultiRealauthor David Louis Edelman:

“I began with a vision of a futuristic world, and worked backwards to figure out how everything came together. Most of the backstory came about when I was writing the early chapters of Infoquake and just started randomly filling things in. When I’d get stuck writing the story proper, I’d just spend some time writing background articles. This kind of thing has always been attractive to me. I was the kid who bought AD&D modules just because I liked to read them, even though I didn’t have anyone to play AD&D with. I’m the guy who always liked The Silmarillion better than The Lord of the Rings.”

On the Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast episode 75, host Shaun Farrel interviews End of the Centuryauthor Chris Roberson! Here’s the direct download link. (And, as a reminder, here is part one and part two of my massive Tor.com piece on Roberson’s entire career. Part two wasn’t up when I left town.)

These guys are making it hard for me to get caught up!

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David Louis Edelman Reading Tonight

The Barnes & Noble in the Spectrum Center in Reston, Virginia will be hosting David Louis Edelman tonight, Wednesday, September 17 at 7:00 pm. He’ll be reading from and signing copies of MultiReal.Come on by if you are in the area! The store is at 1851 Fountain Drive, Reston, VA 20190, phone number 703-437-9490.

Check out the recent praise for MultiReal:

  • io9: “I’m in it for the long haul, because it feels like Edelman is writing about real people and real issues, in a thrilling, engaging way. And that’s rarer than it should be.”
  • Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist: “This is one sequel that delivers! No middle book syndrome for David Louis Edelman… The Jump 225 trilogy remains one of the very best ongoing science fiction series on the market.”
  • Bookgasm: “Infoquake’s strengths have carried over to its sequel… With Infoquake and MultiReal, [Edelman]’s got new archetypes aplenty, and he doesn’t need old tropes to slow him down.”
  • Chicago Center for Literature and Photography: “(Rating: 8.8 out of 10) This is a series that genre fans will definitely want to check out, and an individual chapter here that could very well garner a Hugo nomination next year.”
  • Through a Glass, Darkly: “Even for a reader who loves laser battles and big explosions, MultiReal still comes across as extremely satisfying and fun.”
  • Death Ray Magazine (not online): “A mix of cyberpunk and The Wall Street Journal… Where Edelman does excel, and the true focus of the book, is exploring the economics and political powers behind new technologies, their development and routes to market and the social and moral implications of such advancements.”


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David Louis Edelman: Wiping the Slate Clean

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

Loved this bit on worldbuilding:

Science Fiction is a language of mirrors by which we (readers and writers) can compare and contrast our own society and its problems. This is clearly the case with the Jump 225 trilogy, so when you created this future history, how necessary do you feel it was to sort of destroy everything and restart?

Wiping the slate clean with an Armageddon scenario five hundred years before the events of Jump 225 was really just a narrative trick. It enabled me to focus on the things I wanted to focus on — namely, software and business and sociology — and conveniently ignore the things I didn’t want to talk about. AIs? Boom! They were destroyed in the Autonomous Revolt. Nuclear weapons? Boom! Used in the Revolt and then subsequently abandoned. Cloning and genetic engineering? Same thing.

It’s one of the things science fiction and fantasy do really well. If I had set the Jump 225 trilogy in today’s world, I would have gotten sidetracked by lots of issues that I just didn’t feel like dealing with. It’s funny, but I think setting the books in an imaginary world allowed me to get a tighter focus on the real world.

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?

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Edelman Interview

There’s an interview up with MultiRealauthor David Louis Edelman online at both Mike Brotherton’s blog and Simon Haynes’ blog.

Well worth checking out. Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt, apropos in light of my earlier post on conflating an author with his/her protagonist:

The political factions in the Jump 225 trilogy are divided between governmentalists and libertarians. If you were a character in the books, which would you be?

A lot of people who’ve read Infoquake assumed that my sympathies lie with the libertarians, because that’s where Natch’s sympathy lies. But I’m definitely more conflicted in my politics. I like to pick and choose among the different parties and philosophies. I have some definite liberal tendencies but a number of conservative ones as well.

You’ll discover in MultiReal that the political situation is much more nuanced than Natch makes it out to be in Infoquake. The central government, which really seems like the epitome of evil in Infoquake, is a conflicted organization itself with some do-gooders working in the fringes. And the libertarians are full of self-interested schemers who’ll stab you in the back.

Update 7/09/08: John Joseph Adams conducts another interview with Edelman over on the SciFi Channel’s Sci Fi Wire:

“In Infoquake, our hero, Natch, managed to connive his way into co-owning this mysterious new technology called MultiReal. Now, in the sequel, this all-powerful government agency called the Defense and Wellness Council decides that MultiReal is too dangerous to be left to an unscrupulous businessman, so they come after him with both barrels.”

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Has It Really Been So Long Since "Who Shot JR" ?

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The latest issue of Locus magazine has a review of David Louis Edelman’s just-released MultiReal,chocked full of good and quotable things like:

“As SF, it’s a brilliant imagining of a near-future that not only extrapolates convincingly from current technology and culture but fills in the gaps with world-building so detailed as to verge on the tedious.”

…and….

“Others have imagined a future in which nano-machines have colonized the human body, …but few have done so as convincingly as Edelman does in these books.”

…and…

‘Others have also focused on the business side of SF, …but I’ve never encountered an SF writer whose focus is so relentlessly on the nuts and bolts of the entrepreneurial world, from the boardroom to the factory to the sales office, and who—pontification aside—can make the minutiae of that world seem as exciting and dangerous as a military operation.”

But the reviewer does seem to have tripped up on the idea that because Dave’s character Natch is the protagonist that he is being held up as a laudable individual. As witness:

“I have no doubt that others will be enamored of a novel in which the main character is frequently referred to as ‘the entrepreneur,’ as if there were no higher accolade available, and no one else worthy to bear it. Whenever I came across this descriptor, I simply replaced it with ‘the demigod’ and read on.”

Mind you, I’m not arguing with the review – because it’s always a bad idea to contest someone else’s subjective opinion – and I’m plenty happy with the quotables above. I’m just interested in the notion of protagonist as role model because a few other people came away with similar sentiments from the first book. (I myself worked for someone very much like Natch once upon a time, and so had no trouble recognizing exactly what he was.) But I find myself wondering why we seem to have such a hard time with flawed protagonists in SF. Our sister genre, mystery, is practically built on the adventures of broken human beings you might want on your case but wouldn’t necessarily enjoy having a beer with, loaning money to, or dating.

Anyway, I find this amusing, given that Dave himself just compared Natch to Adolph Hitler here in his post on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog author spotlight, The Big Idea.

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