David Louis Edelman

The Latest Newsletter From David Louis Edelman

All,

I haven’t sent out an Infoquake newsletter in a little while, because — well, because there hasn’t been much newsworthy Infoquake stuff to report. So I thought I’d take an opportunity to talk about upcoming appearances.

  • March 21: KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction Reading in New York, NY. I will be reading at Ellen Datlow and Gavin Grant’s celebrated KGB Fantastic Fiction Series on Wednesday, March 21 at 7 PM, along with Nebula and Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Carol Emshwiller. If you’re in the New York area, you probably know all about these readings. They tend to be very lively and well-attended, and then everyone hangs out at dinner afterwards. So come on down and bring your friends! (Can anybody recommend a good, cheap place nearby to stay?)
  • April 20-22: Penguicon in Troy, MI. This promises to be quite an intriguing event: a convention devoted to both science fiction and open source software. I’m already on the hook for a reading and a signing, and will probably be signing up for more.
  • May 5: Annapolis Book Festival in Annapolis, MD. I’m going to be appearing on a science fiction authors panel with (so far) Catherine Asaro.
  • May 25-27: Balticon in Baltimore, MD.
  • July 5-8: Readercon in Burlington, MA.

I’ll be bringing along stacks of promotional Infoquake CDs to all of these events, with sample chapters in a variety of formats and other goodies.

A couple pieces of Infoquake-related news since the last newsletter:

  • Appearance on NPR Weekend Edition. Yes, I was on NPR’s Weekend Edition, interviewed by Rick Kleffel of the Agony Column. You can listen to the piece here.
  • 20 Minute Audio Interview with the Dragon Page. The popular science fiction podcast Dragon Page Cover to Cover posted a 20-minute audio interview with me in January. Interviewer Evo Terra grilled me about how nanotechnology is changing our world, the real world/virtual world hybrid of the multi network, whether the book’s protagonist Natch is really just a power-hungry bastard, how the characters in Infoquake differ psychologically from 21st century people, and how Natch compares to modern-day entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. (The interview begins about 7 minutes 50 seconds in to the podcast.)
  • Reviews from NY Review of SF, Libertarian Futurist Society. The New York Review of Science Fiction called Infoquake “a brisk, well-told science fiction adventure… where incident crowds onto incident, where jeopardy makes us hold our breath, and rabbits are pulled from the hat only at the very last moment.” Meanwhile, Prometheus, the newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society, praised the book as “a raw and fascinating novel, with a fast pace and and nifty economic themes.” Finally, SF blogger Christian Suavé said in his review: “Fluent in the languages of business and information technology, Infoquake is a ride through a fresh future, a strong debut from a promising writer, and a proud representative of Pyr’s early line-up.”

For those who continue to ask when MultiReal will be coming out… I’ve finished what I somewhat haphazardly labeled the Fourth Draft of the book and am on the line-edits-with-pen stage. I hope to have an announcement on a publication date sometime in the next couple months, but in the meantime you can read a preview of what’s in store on my blog. The book’s gonna rawk.

Coming up: the venerable Asimov’s magazine will be reviewing Infoquake in their 30th anniversary April/May issue. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Towards Perfection,

David Louis Edelman
Author of INFOQUAKE
www.infoquake.net
www.davidlouisedelman.com

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Info Dragons

An audio interview with Infoquakeauthor David Louis Edelman, conducted by Evo Terra, is up on the Dragon Page, Cover to Cover #245. David talks about writing the book, the singularity and the rapture of the nerds, the increasingly technological aspect of modern living, and the complexities of his central protagonist (who is less a money-grubbing bastard, more a stand in for Western civilization, and closer to Bill Gates than Steve Jobs, apparently.) It’s one of David’s best interviews to date, too, IMHO. Check it out.

(Aside: David’s editor is also happy to learn that Book Two is almost done. That’s good news.)

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Infoquake Author 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.

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InfoView – David Louis Edelman on SFFWorld

Rob H. Bedford has just posted a new interview with David Louis Edelman on SFFWorld.

Speaking of his recent World Science Fiction convention appearance, Edelman says, “A few people did recognize me from the hat, but most people had no idea who I was until someone would say, “you know, the Infoquake guy.” They seemed to recognize the title of the book. I guess it’s a good thing I decided on something short and punchy rather than the book’s original title, Randomly Generated Pleasurable Startle 37b.”

Meanwhile, Edelman says he will make his next convention appearance at CapClave in Silver Spring, MD (October 20-22). Look for the guy in the hat!

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Infoquake: Agony Column Interview & SFRevu Review

Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column has conducted a long, in-depth interview with Infoquake author David Louis Edelman. The interview is online in its entirety in both MP3 and RealAudio formats. Meanwhile, it will air in edited form on KUSP on September 22nd, and will appear at some point as part of another program on NPR (details as we have them).

In his online introduction, Rick says, “I loved this novel, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. It stayed with me, this economic vision of the future as one giant marketing meeting and product development push. The characters were quite well delineated, the vision of the future seemed an entertaining twist on the present and the plot, about a last-minute product-launch crush, was so reminiscent of my own experiences that it seemed really gripping.”

Now, this is really interesting to me.

Infoquake is getting rave reviews, with some sites calling it “a triumph of speculation,” and “the science fiction book of the year,” with multiple comparisons to the work of Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, and Vernor Vinge. But you notice that one of the things which Rick – who is very enthusiastic about the work overall – responds to is that Infoquake was “so reminiscent of my own experiences.”

Now, why is that interesting to me? Well, my own love for Infoquake is probably coupled tightly with the fact that in 2000 I worked right in the heart of the dot com bubble, for an online publishing start-up in downtown San Francisco. And I worked for Natch. Utterly. He was a she, but it was Natch.

I remember coming into work one day, and my boss started enthusing about this “terrific” book she was reading on the “three stages of company building.” She explained that first you hired trail blazers, whose job was to hack out the territory from the jungle. Then, she said, you fired them and replaced them with company builders, who knew how to build the infrastructure. They were in turn to be replaced by managerial types, who had the skills necessary to run a sustainable company on a day-to-day basis.

“Wait,” I said, “Are you telling me now that after we’ve busted our humps building this company for you, you are going to fire us all and replace us with suits?”

“Any of us,” she said with a air of incredulity at my ignorance that dared me to take issue, “should be willing to step down for the good of the company. Why, I’d stand aside myself if I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Yes,” I thought, but didn’t say aloud, “but you’d still own it.”

So you see, I was uniquely suited to appreciate David’s work.

But while the book is getting rave reviews everywhere, the one or two folks who haven’t liked it, or have minor problems with it, seem to also be people who have also worked for a Natch of their own.

Now, I see that SFRevue, who likes the book enough to continue with the series and says, “he’s got a good grasp of corporate warfare and I’m interested enough to want to see where he goes with the story from here,” nonetheless complains that “the characters in the book are quite like people I’ve known in the world of international entrepreneurship. Work is their life, and much as I channel the puritan ethos myself, it’s hard to do anything other than feel sorry for them as they ramp themselves up for another 36 hour stint to prepare for the next dog and pony show.”

Now, I’m not arguing with the SFRevue review, not at all. Please don’t think that. And there review is a 90% positive one. The more apropo examples I’m thinking of are from private conversations. I’m just interested to see that Rick and I liked the book because we knew the characters, where others have seen this as a detriment. And I wonder why that is.

I wonder too if it has to do with the fact that some readers today have a problem with flawed protagonists. I’m just posing a question here, but it may be a side effect of the Hollywood formula film that we are less prepared to enjoy unsympathetic or unethical leads these days. Certainly, I’ve seen a few critics call out flawed leads as “daring” choices in their reviews. But that suggests they are also rare choice in today’s clime. So, is it a problem for today’s audience – to read about someone who is less than perfect? I don’t know. And yet, wasn’t the Achilles Heel one of the essentials of Greek tragedy?

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John Scalzi Interviews David Louis Edelman

Noted author and blogger John Scalzi (he of Old Man’s War and the Ghost Brigades) interviews David Louis Edelman, author of Infoquake, on his AOL blog By the Way. While talking about writing the future of business, Edelman says:

“The thing to remember about predicting the future is that human nature doesn’t change. We’re still the same people that Adam Smith wrote about. We’re still the same people that Shakespeare wrote about. In fact, as Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke pointed out in 2001, we really haven’t changed much since that first dude figured out how to hit the other dude on the head with a bone. In some ways, all of human history is just one long story about two groups squabbling over limited resources.”

Read the whole interview here, and be sure to stop by David’s Infoquake page, where he offers chapter excerpts, podcasts, and numerous background articles about the world of the novel, several of them exclusive to the website. Also see the new group blog Deep Genre, of which Edelman is a founding member.

Update: Rick Kleffel has just published his review of Infoquake over on the Agony Column:

“…a very solid and satisfying read… Edelman has one hell of a hoot taking high-tech marketing out to draw and quarter it with style and panache. Infoquake is a very funny and insightful novel of modern economics through a futuristic funhouse mirror… Edelman’s future has lots of interesting nods and textures. The kind of virtual life and secondary worlds that have become part-and-parcel of post cyberpunk science fiction are here in layers. …delivers a solid and satisfying science fiction novel.”

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