Infoquake

KGB Reading Wrap-Up

From Infoquake author David Louis Edelman (with photos courtesy of Ellen Datlow):

I arrived back late last night from my trip to New York for the Fantastic Fiction Reading Series at the KGB Bar. Co-organizer Ellen Datlow was kind enough to post photos of the event on her Flickr account.

The reading, I felt, went fabulous. At 40 people, the reading audience was both the largest and most attentive I’ve ever been in front of. I read my story “Mathralon,” which, as I told the audience, is the first science fiction short story I’ve finished since around 1991. Despite the fact that the story had no plot, no characters, and (almost) no dialog, it seemed to get a very good reaction from the crowd. A few laughs, a few smiles, a few people rushing up after I finished to discuss it. The 35 signed copies of “Mathralon” I brought disappeared in short order. I would post the story here, but I’m hoping to give it one more quick polish and then submit it for publication.

David Louis Edelman reading at the KGB BarCarol Emshwiller, the main attraction of the night, was most fabulous as well. She read a surreal and somewhat tender story called “God Clown” which had the audience alternately laughing, smiling, and just staring around misty-eyed in appreciation. She was even nice enough to repeatedly lie to me by saying I was a tough act to follow.

Among the folks in the audience that I got to schmooze with were John Joseph Adams, assistant editor at Fantasy & Science Fiction, which would be a great venue for “Mathralon” (and have I mentioned what a dashing, handsome, intelligent fellow John is?); Douglas Cohen, who holds the same title at Realms of Fantasy; Jenny Rappaport, literary agent extraordinaire; Josh Vogt, an up-and-coming SF writer, frequent commenter on this blog, and as I discovered, very nice guy; Eugene Myers, another SF writer and Clarion graduate who put my name in front of Ellen Datlow for this reading in the first place; and Victor Klymenko, who helpfully pointed out some science flubs in “Mathralon” that I wasn’t aware of.

At dinner afterwards, my wife and I got to sit at the “grown-ups” table next to organizers Ellen Datlow and Gavin Grant. Other denizens of said table included Robert Legault, Gordon Linzner, Chris Fisher, Tempest Bradford, and Rick Bowes. Sighted at the other table were Liz Gorinsky and a nice, gregarious woman who I just knew I recognized and only just now looking at the Flickr feed do I realize was Kelly Link. My fellow DeepGenre blogger Constance Ash said she was going to show up, but she couldn’t make it, for which I will never, ever, ever forgive her until — okay, she’s forgiven.

I’m told that next month, KGB is hosting novelist Jon Armstrong, whose debut novel Grey I read on the train. It was a light, enjoyable read, and trippier than anything you’ve ever written. (Okay, not you, Jeff VanderMeer, or you, China Mieville. But trippy nonetheless.)

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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.

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Author Appearances: David Louis Edelman & Kay Kenyon

David Louis Edelman is making the following appearances, including a reading at the famous KGB Bar, for his critically-acclaimed Infoquake:

*March 21 KGB Bar/New York, NY Fantastic Fiction Series, 7 pm ET
*April 20-22 Penguicon/Troy, MI
*May 5 Annapolis Book Festival/Annapolis, MD
*May 25-27 Balticon/Baltimore, MD
*July 5-8 Readercon/Burlington, MA

Kay Kenyon will be signing copies of her forthcoming sci-fantasy epic, Bright of the Sky,on the following dates:

*Apr. 15 A Book For All Seasons/Leavenworth, WA 1-3 pm
*Apr. 17 Read it Again Books/Wenatchee, WA 7 pm

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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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The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

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.”

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Give Me Liberty and Then Some!

Rob H. Bedford has posted his review of Martin Sketchley’s The Liberty Gun over on SFFWorld. Rob likes the book, and I’m gratified to see so much praise heaped on the characters, both human and alien, in what is a fast-paced action novel. Furthermore, Rob writes:

“Flavoring the whole of the novel are many themes – gender roles, sexuality roles, and adjustment to the alien. These themes balance very well with the high-octane action scenes. Throughout the novel, Sketchley continues to inject the adrenaline into the series, between breakneck chase scene and the tooth-and-nail fights. The novel draws to a relatively predictable close, though the specifics aren’t quite as predictable, if that makes sense. It was easy enough to follow Sketchley’s path, but the last few turns were a bit surprising. The Liberty Gun brought the novel to a satisfying conclusion, Sketchley left himself enough wiggle room should he wish to return to these characters.”

Elsewhere, over on his Rob’s Blog o’Stuff, he posts his thoughts on the favorite reads of the year, including a few Pyr titles. Of David Louis Edelman’s Infoquake, he says:

“What [Scott] Lynch did for my fantasy reading taste-buds, Edleman did for my Science Fiction reading taste-buds. A believable protagonist in an all-too plausible extrapolated future with a Big Idea and backed by a future history was a lot of fun to read. Check out my review from earlier in the year.”

Sean Williams’s The Crooked Letter: “This was another beautiful Pyr book; Williams blended elements from all the speculative fiction branches to create a stew of the fantastic and horrific. The second book, The Blood Debt, published in October and while different in some respects, it was a fantastic continuation of the over-reaching saga.

Chris Roberson’s Paragaea: A Planetary Romance: “Part SF, part fantasy, part physics, and part pirate novel, Roberson pulled off a nice trick in this one. I’d love to read more about these people and the strange and familiar world.”Blogger: Pyr-o-mania – Edit Post “Give Me (More) Liberty!”

Mike Resnick’s New Dreams for Old: “I’ve heard and read of Resnick’s reputation, with all the awards he’s both won and for which he’d been nominated. This book showed me why.”

Meanwhile, over at his House of Awkwardness, novelist and tv scribe Paul Cornell picks Infoquake as his favorite SF novel of the year. “A future of business and competition that we can all identify with, which neatly avoids apocalyptic cliché, and thus the adoration of the British SF critics. I’ve blogged about it before, otherwise I’d say more. And hey, catchphrases you can use online: towards perfection!”

Along with, it should be noted in fairness, a less than favorable review of Paragaea, the website Ideomancer posts the first review of my own upcoming anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge:

“This anthology is proof hard science fiction is still a vibrant, worthwhile endeavor for any writer; here’s hoping this anthology series has a long, healthy life.”

Amen!

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Pyr Makes 3 of Bookgasm’s Top 5 (point five)

2 Comments /

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.”

“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.

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Quando il business è da fantascienza

David Louis Edelman, and Infoquake, have shown up on the Italian website Fantascienza.com, in a piece which, as far as I can tell, quotes Edelman’s earlier interview on Sci Fi Wire. Now, I don’t read Italian, but I do know how to call up Babel Fish, that wonderful web service that owes it’s name to Douglas Adams but reminds me of nothing more than the opening chapters of Philip K. Dick’s Galactic Pot Healer, in which bored employees in three countries push famous quotes thru translation software and back again, then play guessing games as to what the original text is.

Thus, in the spirit of PKD, who, I believe, would have appreciated Infoquake, I present these wonderful excerpts from the Babel Fish translation:

“We speak instead of Infoquake, novel of debut of trentacinquenne the American David Louis Edelman, programmatore, web designer, journalist and now also ski fi writer (operates its, between the others, the situated one web of the U.S. Army), which it seems to have inaugurated a new fantascientifico kind that same it defines one via of means between Dunes and the Wall ßstreet Journal. Interviewed from Ski Fi Wire, Edelman has delineated the weft of the book centralized on the figure of Natch, a businessman pitiless and lacking in scrupoli whose scope consists in launch on the market one new technology of which it ignores the real essence, potentially dangerous.”

And, my favorite, this piece contrasting Infoquake and it’s forthcoming sequel:

“While in Infoquake the action regards mainly the part, so to speak, mercantilistica of the matter, with taken care of descriptions of the tactics of sale and all the dirty ones makes up that they put in field the speculators without scrupoli, in Multi-Real the vicissitude takes a fold more political, even if the pure action does not lack in both cases, guarantees Edelman. Insomma, after the fantapolitica, the fantathriller, the fantaeconomia, the fantastoria etc etc, is the turn of the fantabusiness. “

Who couldn’t be for that! Thank you Babel Fish and thank you, most importantly, Fantascienza, for helping spread the word.

Update: While we’re on the subject, Paul Cornell – he of Doctor Who novel, audiobook & television fame – has just selected Infoquake as his favorite SF novel of the year. As he describes on his blog, the House of Awkwardness:

“My favourite SF novel of the year. A future of business and competition that we can all identify with, which neatly avoids apocalyptic cliché, and thus the adoration of the British SF critics. I’ve blogged about it before, otherwise I’d say more. And hey, catchphrases you can use online: towards perfection!”

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