Will the novel die? I won’t keep you in suspense: Yes, the novel will die. It might not happen in your lifetime. But yes, I can say unequivocally that the novel will eventually breathe its last and lay down contentedly in the grave of dead art forms. I’ll be very conservative and estimate 50 years.

And you know what? It’s not that big a deal.

Ever since the advent of television, people have predicted the demise of the novel, and other people have smugly sat back and declared that since it hasn’t happened yet, it won’t happen at all. But I think a lot of these defenders of the novel have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a novel is, not to mention a fundamental misconception of its importance.

First off, we have to consider the question of what it means to be a dead medium. A dead medium is simply one which does not produce a significant number of new works of art. When a medium of expression dies, that doesn’t mean that the jackbooted Art Police storm into your house in the middle of the night to burn every instance of it they can find. Life ain’t Fahrenheit 451. If the last novel rolls off the printing press tomorrow at 9 a.m., we’ll still have hundreds of millions of novels lying around to enjoy until they crumble into dust. And unlike, say, the 8-track tape or the HD-DVD, there’s no specialized equipment necessary for reading novels.

Nor do the Art Police threaten anyone with imprisonment who dares to create art in a dead medium. Vinyl is a dead medium for music, and yet there are still people producing vinyl records. Polka is a dead art form, and yet you can still find people not named Weird Al Yankovic creating polka. Given the importance of the novel to Western civilization, I’m sure that printers will continue pumping the things out in special limited editions long after the masses have stopped buying them in mass quantities.

You might think that I’m mixing up the terms medium and form here. The medium of the novel is that 8″ x 12″ hunk of pulped wood, while the form of the novel is the 120,000 words of prose that gets inked onto the surface. But the point I’m trying to make here (as Frank Lloyd Wright and Marshall McLuhan made long before me) is that those two things are inextricably tied together. The medium of the novel is its form.

We haven’t always had novels. No, in fact, while recorded human history has been going on for five thousand years now (depending on how you define it), the novel has been around for less than five hundred (depending on how you define it). Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle never read a single novel in their lives; I don’t think Shakespeare could have read more than a handful of them.

The fact of the matter is that the novel itself is an art form that evolved to take advantage of a certain new technology, namely the printing press. Why do books tend to be no larger than around 8″ x 12″? Because that’s about as large as you can make a book and still be able to hold it comfortably in your hands and transport it from place to place. Why does the print tend to be around a point size of 12? Because that’s about as small as you can make text and still have it be readable at arm’s length. Take those limitations and you’ll find that you can’t easily pack more than 200,000 words into a single novel.

So the novel is, in fact, a device that’s both created by and limited by certain factors of human physiology. These same limitations govern any art form. Ever wonder why most films are less than 180 minutes in length? There are certain issues surrounding the economics of movie theater chains and the technical specs of film projectors, but the real reason is even simpler. 180 minutes is about the amount of time that human beings can comfortably sit and pay attention to a film without having to either eat or hit the bathroom. Tack in an intermission or two and you can extend that timeframe for a while. But until we’ve got gastrointestinal and neurological programming that allows us to drastically extend the amount of time between bathroom breaks and naps, you’re never going to see, say, a 26-hour movie.

If you don’t believe that the printing process hinders creativity, consider this: most novelists don’t even write in print anymore. The vast majority of us compose our words electronically on computer screens. What you’re reading when you pick up a novel is a transposition of our art; you’re reading some publisher’s translation of our words onto an 8″ x 12″ hunk of pulped wood with a glossy piece of laminated artwork wrapped around it. Not only do novelists have little to do with the production of that hunk of pulped wood, but we’re often actively discouraged and prevented from having a say in it. We hand in Microsoft Word files. We don’t pick the cover artists, we don’t do the typesetting, we don’t design the little artsy doodads that drape over the chapter numbers.

The point I’m making is that there’s nothing magical about the size, shape, and length of a novel. There’s no divine law which states that the perfect size of a story is between 80,000 and 150,000 words. That just happens to be the number of words that will comfortably fit in your hands using standard twentieth century printing technology. It happens to be what the twentieth century publishing, distribution, and retail business was set up to deal with.

But now? With electronic media, you can fit an infinite number of words in your hands. You can hold Robert Jordan’s entire Wheel of Time series in your sweaty mitts if it’s digitized on a laptop or an Amazon Kindle.

It’s true that reading in digitized format is still kind of an unwieldy affair. You don’t find people reading novels on the subway with their laptops because it’s a pain. You have to boot the things up, you have to plug them in every few hours, and God help you if you spill a can of Dr. Pepper on them. I have yet to see an Amazon Kindle in the flesh (so to speak), but my impression is that Jeff Bezos hasn’t quite cracked the code on this one either. And, honestly, I don’t think he — or anyone else — will crack the code. Sorry, folks: I’ve been saying for years that there just isn’t enough money in novel publishing to support a dedicated e-book reader. The economics just isn’t there. (I won’t waste time going into the reasons for this, since Charlie Stross has done a fine job of it already.)

No, the novel will move onto the laptop computer — or whatever the laptop computer becomes in the next 20 to 30 years. Think about it: the MacBook Air fits in a manila folder. The MacBook 2020 will fit in a manila folder, and might just be foldable and solar powered too. Laptop screen text has finally gotten to the point where it’s easily readable just in the past few years, with the advent of LCD screens and font smoothing technologies like ClearType. In another fifteen years, onscreen text will be more readable than print text — plus you’ll be able to read it in any kind of lighting, resize it at will, and project it onto large surfaces.

Very soon we’re going to have a medium for distributing the written word that’s not only easier but better suited to the task than books. So let’s dispense with the silly, sentimental arguments you often hear about why storytelling is never going to go electronic. “You can’t replace the feeling of a holding a book,” “I don’t like reading on a screen,” and “I can’t read an e-book in the bathtub” are some of the sillier excuses you hear all the time for why printed books are going to survive until the end of time. I’m sorry, but “I can hold my entire library in my hand,” “I can download new books at will,” “I can search my entire library in a nanosecond,” “I can instantly send books to my friends,” “I can translate and define words on the fly,” and “I don’t have to devote an entire room of my house to holding my books” are going to trump reading in the bathtub any day of the week.

(Besides which… do you really think your laptop computer is going to be subject to being shorted out by a splash of water for very long? Dude, I’m willing to bet that your grandkids — if not your kids — if not you — will have no problem accessing their computers underwater.)

To sum up: the written word is going electronic. Permanently. Soon. Once that happens, storytellers will have no need to shoehorn their stories into these 8″ x 12″ hunks of pulped wood and ink. And once we’re not restricted to the medium of the novel, we’ll be leaving the form behind.

The death of the novel doesn’t mean the death of storytelling. It doesn’t mean that nobody’s ever going to put an Aristotelian structure of fiction into 120,000 words. On the contrary, it’s going to mean that storytelling will finally be unleashed. We’re going to see fiction strap on blue tights and a red cape and really soar.

Personally I think that’s going to be fun to see.

* * *

An interesting side point: You don’t see many people whining over the (imminent) death of the CD. At least not in artistic terms. There are plenty of people bemoaning the economics of the music biz, but I haven’t heard anyone claim that the art itself is suffering for it. Why? Because music continues on. We recognize that what we enjoy about the music is the actual notes; all the other stuff (the liner notes, the cover art, the videos, the arrangement of songs in 10- to 12-song chunks) is extraneous.

I wonder how long musical artists will continue to produce 3- to 5-minute songs. The length of the typical rock song is no accident; it happens to correspond rather nicely with the amount of music a 45 RPM record will hold. When the 33 1/3 RPM record became the dominant force in popular music in the 1960s and artists were suddenly freed from the constraints of the 45 RPM record, you saw the birth of the so-called “concept album.” I suspect popular music is still around 3 to 5 minutes in length for two reasons: because broadband technologies still make it prohibitive to download anything much longer than that for a large number of consumers; and because musicians are still under the influence of commercial television and feature films. A five-minute song is the perfect length to play behind movie credits or in between commercial breaks.

So what would the “normal” length of a piece of music be, freed from any technological constraints? Keep in mind that we still have physiological restraints of memory and basic human restlessness to consider. I suspect, based on little more than gut instinct, that 12 to 15 minutes might be a more natural length of time for a piece of music.

Which leads to the question of how long the “normal” story will be, freed from any technological constraints. Hard to say, and I’m not really even willing to hazard a guess.

• The world is a vile and dangerous place.
• America is blindly and irrationally hated by just about everybody outside of our borders.
• If we left our security up to the peaceniks, bureaucrats, and Boy Scouts we elect to national office, the United States would be a smoldering ruin in a matter of months.
• Therefore it’s necessary that we fund a zillion intelligence agencies and black ops teams who routinely conduct secret assassinations in the name of defending our country.
• Nevertheless, despite our massive economic and military power, the United States is drastically outnumbered and constantly on the verge of apocalypse.

At least, these are the assumptions behind just about every spy thriller ever made. Now I find myself wondering: When the hell did these assumptions become so ingrained in our psyche? When did we blithely start accepting this worldview? Who says the United States should behave this way — and, for that matter, when did we all decide that the United States actually does behave this way? What the fuck happened to my country?

These assumptions are also the ones that underline 2002’s The Bourne Identity. It’s a nice little popcorn flick with a plot so familiar you can slip into it like an old bathrobe. Matt Damon plays Matt Damon, playing a CIA-funded black ops assassin who has a change of heart because the agency has Gone Too Far. Now after a bout of amnesia, he finds himself on the run from the very organization that funded him. Car chases and dead bodies ensue. Spoiler alert: the heroic Matt Damon gets the girl, and the villainous Chris Cooper gets shot in the head. (Oh, and FYI, there are more spoilers below.)

And then someone had the inspired idea of hiring Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93) to take over the franchise. To call The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum better films than their predecessor is kind of like calling a fine aged pinot grigio better than a Zima. They’re among the most intelligent, well-crafted, thoughtful thrillers about American paranoia that I’ve ever seen. (And holy crap, did you realize Matt Damon could act?)

Suddenly our protagonist is no longer just a youthful maverick spy fleeing across Europe with a spunky German chick in tow. Jason Bourne is not so much a character in Supremacy and Ultimatum as he is a manifestation of the American subconscious. He’s an unstoppable force who never tires, who never gives up, who can never be killed. Imagine a cross between Batman and Patrick Henry who knows how to kill people with a plastic pen.

Richard Corliss clearly noticed the transformation in his Time magazine review of The Bourne Ultimatum:

That’s the secret of this character, and Bond and John McClane and all the other action-movie studs. They are a projection of American power — or a memory of it, and the poignant wish it could somehow return. In real life, as a nation these days, we can achieve next to nothing. But in the Bourne movies just one of us, grim, muscular and photogenic, can take on all villains, all at once, and leave them outwitted, dead, disgraced. That’s a macho fantasy of the highest, purest, most lunatic order.

Corliss is on to something here, but I think he’s got it exactly backwards. Jason Bourne isn’t just an action stud in the James Bond mold; Bourne is, in fact, a calculated response to James Bond, or more than that, he’s the anti-James Bond. James Bond on the Bizarro planet. Is it an accident that Jason Bourne and James Bond have the same initials? (Well, actually it probably is. But you’d have to ask Robert Ludlum, who created the character, and he’s dead. But apparently Greengrass didn’t read the Ludlum novels anyway.)

James Bond uses an assortment of high-tech gadgets helpfully provided to him by the British government. Sleek guns, high-tech cars, gizmos that are notable mainly for the way they’re camouflaged inside ordinary objects. Over the years, Bond has used:

• A remote-controlled BMW with rocket launcher
• A tricked-out surfboard with a hidden compartment for guns and explosives
• A ballpoint pen grenade
• A wristwatch with a built-in laser cutter
• An escape pod concealed in a ski jacket

Jason Bourne, by contrast, uses such glamorous weapons as:

• A cheap rotating fan
• A rolled-up newspaper
• Laundry pulled from a clothesline
• A beat-up Cooper Mini
• A plastic pen
• A hardback book

But even more interesting than the contrast of weapons is the contrast of attitudes towards government. James Bond is, in many ways, a manifestation of how the British would like to see themselves: debonair and worldly; as technologically adept as the Americans, without sacrificing class and gentility; dangerous when crossed. In the world of James Bond, the British government might be stodgy, but its heart is in the right place.

Jason Bourne, on the other hand, is a maverick who was once broken by his own government and is now on the run from it. In the world of Jason Bourne, the United States government is composed of equal parts corrupt slimeball and impotent douchebag, with a small contingent of do-gooders skulking around the fringes.

We can discuss Great Britain and James Bond another day. As for America: how did we get to this point? When did we get to the point that the assumptions outlined at the top of this article became commonplace?

I imagine it began in the aftermath of World War II as we ramped up to fight the Communists in their quest for world domination. It was fertilized by the suspicious assassination of John F. Kennedy, watered by Nixon’s dirty tricks in Watergate, nurtured by Reagan’s Iran/Contra hijinks, and ripened by George W. Bush’s global war on terror. And no, it wasn’t just the province of Republican administrations; Johnson was as manipulative a son-of-a-bitch as they come, Clinton did very little to stop or reverse the trend, and Carter played right into the paranoids’ hands by letting a bunch of religious maniacs hold Americans hostage in Iran without consequence.

The end result is that we the people don’t believe in the United States anymore.

Oh, sure, we believe in the people of the United States. We believe that our neighbors here in this country are largely honest, decent, hard-working citizens. But all the things the United States is supposed to stand for — the idea that free and open societies work better than closed ones, the idea that we can work out our differences through courts and legislation, the idea that we should live by principles of law and reason rather than mere tribalism — we don’t have faith in those things anymore. The courts are rigged against us, the government is laced with corruption and undue lobbying influence, the police are either too hampered by bureaucracy or too brutal and bloodthirsty to trust.

No, we need maverick heroes like Jason Bourne (and John McClane, and James Bond, and Indiana Jones, and Batman, and Jack Bauer, and every character that Arnold Schwarzeneggar ever played) who can skirt the law, who can actually break the law when they deem fit and not be held accountable for their actions because we know they’re really good, just, honorable people acting in our best interests. And every situation we face is a 24 situation. Al Qaeda has agents infiltrating your living room, they’re going to blow up the Sears Tower at any minute, there’s a ticking bomb about to go off! What, you want to trust the police at a time like this? You want to follow stupid laws hammered out by some ignorant yahoos in Washington who spend all their time in bed with lobbyists? Are you crazy? We’ve got to do anything we can to prevent this! Law and order be damned, we’ve got to act now now now!

It would be one thing if this was just the exaggerated attitude of the movies. But it’s not.

When a handful of jihadist fanatics murdered three thousand people in 2001, we didn’t trust that we could resolve this through the international cooperation of law enforcement agencies. No, we needed to lash out, we needed to send a disproportionate response, we needed to punish those states who were sympathetic to our enemies. Osama bin Laden isn’t just some robed lunatic with a gun in a cave; he’s evil incarnate. He’s Adolf Hitler! And when you’re facing Adolf Hitler, you can’t resort to ordinary tactics. Extremism in the defense of liberty tain’t no vice.

When Barack Obama recently suggested that even bin Laden should be given due process and his day in court, the nation scoffed. Due process? Man, due process doesn’t work! If we capture that son-of-a-bitch, we need to string him up but good. If you put him in a courtroom with F. Lee Bailey as his attorney, he’ll argue his way out of a conviction and be walking by sundown! Nope, only a secret military trial and execution will do.

(It’s the same mentality that’s at work with the Bush Administration’s runaround of the FISA limits on wiretapping. This just astounds me. FISA allows secret, anonymous, unaccountable intelligence agents to stretch the bounds of the Constitution by conducting wiretaps on U.S. citizens simply by getting rubber-stamp permission from a secret, anonymous, unaccountable judge — and the Bush Administration doesn’t think that’s enough?)

I just don’t believe this paranoid worldview is sustainable. And director Paul Greengrass doesn’t either. Like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart or Irving’s Headless Horseman, these things come back to haunt us. And for Greengrass, in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, that Headless Horseman is Jason Bourne.

Notice the look of fear in the eyes of the various intelligence impresarios that Bourne runs across (played ably by Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Joan Allen, and David Straitharn). Bourne isn’t just a renegade spy; he’s the twitch of conscience that you feel in the middle of the night, he’s the thing that haunts you after you’ve just violated international law in the name of the United States of America. Soil the Constitution, and Jason Bourne will get you.

Interestingly enough, the manifestation of the American subconscious isn’t a bloodthirsty killer. Time and again in these films, we’re subjected to the image of Bourne approaching a target with gun in hand, only to turn away at the last moment and not shoot. Bruce Willis’s John McClane gives a cheerful “Yippeekayay, motherfucker” before he kills; James Bond’s whole signature move is to turn towards the camera, strike a pose, and fire a gun until cartoony blood flows over the lens. I haven’t seen all of the Bond films, but from what I remember every single villain meets some kind of nasty demise in the end. I can think of at least six distinct scenes in the Bourne films where the hero has the villain in his sights, unarmed, gun in hand, and he fails to pull the trigger.

But if Damon’s character isn’t a killer at heart, he isn’t a do-gooder either. He’s not on a righteous crusade to bring America back to lily-white purity. In fact, he’s almost completely self-absorbed; he doesn’t particularly seem to care about America or the government or international law. Sure, he cares for the various mousy white women who get into trouble because of him, but only insomuch as they intersect his path and get in trouble on his behalf.

All of this culminates in what is, to me, one of the most stunning, jaw-dropping, unforgettable scenes in the past decade of film. At the end of Supremacy, Jason Bourne drops in on the teenaged daughter of two of his early assassination targets. And he apologizes.

There’s something incredibly primal about the scene. Bourne is exhausted, gruff, half in shadow; he seems immense alongside the poor girl, who mistakes him at first for a burglar. But Bourne quickly calms her down. He tells her that, contrary to what she’s been told, her parents didn’t die in a murder/suicide. They were gunned down by him, on assignment from the CIA. “It changes things, that knowledge, doesn’t it?” says Bourne. The terrified girl nods. And then Bourne gets up, mumbles “I’m sorry,” and walks out of the room.

It reminded me of that grass-roots campaign that went around the web in the wake of John Kerry’s defeat in the 2004 presidential elections. Remember that? It featured thousands of Americans taking pictures of themselves holding up signs for the world to read expressing how sorry we are that we couldn’t stop George W. Bush from taking office for another four years. (Update 10/4/07: The name of the campaign was “Sorry Everybody,” and you can see the photos at www.sorryeverybody.com.)

When does the American paranoia end? And who will stand up and apologize once it’s over?

So my question today is: what are some quality SF books you can hand off to literate non-SF readers as an introduction to the genre?

Let’s say your readers in question are already discerning connoisseurs of quality literature. They’re not typically readers of so-called pulp novels or airport thrillers. They would think nothing of bundling down with a Philip Roth or a Don DeLillo or a Barbara Kingsolver or something that The New York Times Book Review would approve of. They know who Michiko Kakutani is, and they were reading Cormac McCarthy years before Oprah ever heard of him. But as soon as you mention the words “science fiction,” they picture Klingons with light sabers jumping off spaceships with big-breasted ninja assassins in tow and bug-eyed monsters in hot pursuit while a supernova goes off in the background.

What do you hand to these people to convince them that there’s a lot of intelligent literary science fiction that’s worth reading? (I’m just going to stick to science fiction here — however loosely defined that term is — and maybe we can talk about fantasy another time.) I should emphasize that inclusion on either my do/do not lists are not indicators of the quality of the books themselves.

My main criteria for inclusion is that the book has to generally be filed in the “Science Fiction” section of your local bookstore. Which means no George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges, or Italo Calvino, however much we believe their works should be filed in our camp. We’ve got to tempt these people into the rows with the Dragonlance books and the life-size cutout of Darth Vader, folks.

(Yes, people have posted a zillion “great works in science fiction” on the web… but I haven’t seen many that specifically focus on the quote-unquote literary. Perhaps it’s pointless and elitist to call these people quote-unquote literary readers. But you all know who I’m talking about. Come up with a better name if you want.)

Some of my nominees:

• Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. This book’s strong right-wing bent might turn some people totally off science fiction. But it’s hard to argue that this is a tremendously thoughtful book. It might also open some people’s eyes to the fact that the science fiction you see in the movies has very little resemblance to the science fiction you see on the bookshelves.
• Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin. Some SF types were turned off by this Hugo Award winner because it was too hoity-toity and thinky-thinky. But for literary types, the languid pace and abundance of Big Ideas makes for a good read.
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Hey, science fiction can do feminism too! And not just feminism, but pangenderism and transgenderism and everything else genderismic. In fact, Le Guin and many others like her tackle these issues with much more daring than many of their non-SF contemporaries.
• Ian McDonald’s River of Gods. So immersed is this novel in Indian culture and so masterful is Mr. McDonald’s prose that it’s hard to imagine anyone putting down this book as one of little substance.
• John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Yes, there are space cadets and bug-eyed aliens in this one, and the covers wouldn’t necessarily inspire much confidence for the non-SF reader. But there’s also plenty of humor, sex, politics, and social commentary crammed in there, enough to convince many an SF skeptic.
• Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001. Hoity-toity artsy types are likely to give this book a fair shot because of the Stanley Kubrick film. Which, in case you were wondering, is one of the greatest films ever made (though a little difficult to follow unless you’ve read the book).
• William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. Hardly science fictional at all, but Gibson is such a master stylist and such a keen thinker on matters of business and technology that reading this book just might suck you into his more futuristic stuff.
• Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky. The intellectual heft of this book isn’t quite so apparent at first blush, and the spider people might roll some eyeballs. But the man can write, and his discussions of individuality-versus-groupthink are both powerful and subtle.

Some great books that, on careful reflection, are probably not great books to give to a non-SF reader right out of the gate:

• William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Gibson has the habit of throwing out technical terms that are integral to the plot, and then not explaining them for another 10 to 20 pages. Add to that the moody, noirish atmosphere, and the unexperienced reader might suspect they’re reading some cheap knock-off of Blade Runner.
• Most later Heinlein. All that kinky sex and incest stuff might creep them out, and many of the later books are so full of inside jokes that they’re difficult to penetrate. I don’t think I’d recommend Time Enough for Love to anyone, except my wife, who stubbornly insists this is his best novel.
• Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. As excellent as this novel is — it’s one of my all-time faves, and served as inspiration for a couple of chapters in my Infoquake — stylistically the book’s a little sensationalistic. I’d say you’d be better off starting (and ending) with Speaker for the Dead.
• Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. Literary readers are suckers for style. And say what you will about Asimov’s ideas — most of us agree they were pretty frickin’ fantastic — but his prose is pretty clunky and juvenile.
• Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Ditto.
• Anything by Philip K. Dick. In my own personal experience, you don’t begin to understand what PKD is doing until you’ve read four or five of his books. They just read like bad pulp SF novels. Which they are. Which is why they’re so totally fucking brilliant.
• Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. This happens to be one of my favorite books ever ever, but on first reading the opening 50 pages come across like some sort of pretentious Twilight Zone episode. It’s so much more than that, but readers might not have the patience.
• Frank Herbert’s Dune. Again, one of my favorite novels. But the opening quarter of the book is a little too pulpish and full of funny names and mythologies for the uninitiated. It takes some patience for this one to open up to you.
• Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. A great, great book, but too fanboyish and flippant for the uninitiated.
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Astute readers will point out to you that this is not really a SFnal novel about a man who’s come unstuck in time, but a poignant novel about a man who’s been driven insane by the horrors of war. (Besides which, few venues file this one with the science fiction.)
• Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep. One whiff of the talking wheeled plant people, and your average Anne Tyler reader is outta there. A Deepness in the Sky is a better bet.

So what am I missing? I know these lists skew heavily towards the obvious, but then again I’m not as well-read in SF as some of you out there. Clue me in on what I’m missing.

It’s now been about five months since Pyr published my first novel Infoquake. It seems as good a time as any to sit back and take stock of my promotional efforts. What worked, what didn’t work, what should I have done more of, what should I have done less of?

When I started to make a list of all the promotional efforts I’ve made in the past year, I started to feel — well, a little embarrassed. To an outsider, it must look like I do nothing all day but come up with ways to move copies of Infoquake. The “Infoquakes Cereal” pic here is meant to be a joke, but honestly, sometimes it feels like I’ve tried everything but a sugary cereal for kids.

(Quick aside: Have you ever noticed that when companies say their cereal is “part of this nutritious breakfast,” the cereal box is always sitting next to… a complete nutritious breakfast?)

Here, then, are the promotional efforts I did that I think were well worth doing:

• Designed and programmed a website for the book and bought several related domain names (infoquake.net, jump225.com, multireal.net, geosynchron.net)
• Wrote several original background articles on the world of Infoquake exclusively for the website
• Started a blog about eight months before the release of the book and began consciously trying to write about topics that I hoped would garner me an audience
• Joined the group blogs DeepGenre (thanks to Kate Elliott and Katharine Kerr) and SFNovelists (thanks to Tobias Buckell)
• Attended and got on the programming at a number of science fiction conventions (ReaderCon, WorldCon, Capclave, PhilCon, and upcoming Balticon and Penguicon)
• Hosted a five-book gimmicky giveaway contest on my blog that received a fair bit of attention
• Posted all nine drafts of the first chapter of Infoquake on my website
• Encouraged friends and family members to send e-mails to their contact lists recommending that they check out Infoquake
• Doggedly hunted down every interview opportunity I could find, and ended up getting about seven or eight interviews on sites like Barnes & Noble Explorations, John Scalzi’s By the Way blog, the Agony Column, SFFWorld, and Suite101.com
• Created a MySpace profile and spent a couple weeks aggressively seeking friends with an interest in science fiction (1,698 friends to date!)
• Created a mailing list for the book and added just about everyone I knew to it, then sent out once- or twice-a-month mailings on book news and events
• Made a conscious effort to make friends in the science fiction industry, mostly just because it’s nice to have more friends (although the Machiavellian in me notes that several of these friends have had some very nice things to say about Infoquake on their blogs and such)

I also did a number of promotional efforts that may have had some positive impact, but it’s hard to tell:

• Designed and printed 1,000 four-color Infoquake business cards through VistaPrint.com and passed them out liberally to anyone and everyone
• Recorded the first handful of chapters on audio using my laptop, an old microphone, and free Audacity software, then posted these as a podcast on my website
• Created and gave away approximately 350 promotional Infoquake CDs at cons and readings, including all of the sample chapters and audio files
• Started an Amazon blog that basically just cross-posts the Infoquake-related blog entries from my main WordPress blog, and spent some time tracking down Amazon Friends
• Gave away two signed copies of Infoquake to the Save Apex Digest raffle organized by the radiant Mary Robinette Kowal
• Convinced a friend (Josef K. Foley) to do some original artwork for the Infoquake website
• Did a handful of readings and signings at chain bookstores, which had rather disappointing turnouts, despite considerable publicity (listing in the Washington Post literary calendar, front-of-the-store displays, emails and invites sent to everyone in creation)
• Held two book parties for immediate family and friends on what turned out to be two very inconvenient dates for book parties
• Took a nice, official-looking author photo, only to decide I didn’t like it nearly as much as the spur-of-the-moment photo my wife took outside a club in Boston in 2002
• Read and made comments on two drafts of an Infoquake screenplay, which has been in front of a few big Hollywood players (though I’m not holding my breath)
• Made a conscious effort to participate in the blogosphere by commenting on other people’s blogs
• Managed to get in touch with about a dozen authors and important people to ask for advance praise (“blurbs”), including an Obvious Legendary Hard SF Novelist, two Bestselling High-Tech Journalists, and a Business Legend With a Name So Big That Yes, Your Mother Has Probably Heard of Him — and only got a response from one person, the terrific Kate Elliott, who provided the gracious blurb you see on the praise page

Of course, there were also a number of things I tried to promote my book that have had seemingly no impact or fell flat altogether:

• Started a bulletin board-like Yahoo Group to try to encourage author/reader (or reader/reader) dialogue about the book
• Started a reading group program to encourage people to buy Infoquake in bulk and discuss it in their book clubs
• Tried my hand at writing short stories to get my name out there in the SF magazines, only to discover that finishing a short story is even more difficult for me than finishing a novel
• Created a LiveJournal that just mirrors the copy from my WordPress blog
• Contacted a dozen well-known legal/political bloggers known to be partial to science fiction and tried to get them to review the book; all said they’d take a look at the book, but none of them ever responded to my follow-up emails
• Sent a couple of free press releases out through PRWeb to try and spur some news coverage
• Tried unsuccessfully to persuade my publisher to sell advertising in the book (about which see my blog post Should Novelists Sell Advertisements?)
• Spent waaaay too much time trolling Google, Technorati, Amazon, Yahoo, Icerocket, and other websites to see who’s talking about the book, what they’re saying, how they’re reviewing it, etc.

So now that you’ve gone through these lists of all the shit I’ve done to promote Infoquake and shaken your head in amazement/befuddlement at my persistence/foolishness, what lessons have I learned? What wisdom do I have to impart to other authors about how to promote their books?

1. You don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money. Almost everything on the “useful effort” list above is a cheap or free enterprise. Conventions, of course, can be expensive — but surely you can do what I did, which is to attend cons where you can stay with relatives or friends and use frequent fliers/hotel points. Designing and programming a website can also be expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing — but it’s perfectly acceptable to use free WordPress software and a free WordPress template instead of hiring a designer/programmer like me.

2. Play to your strengths. My strengths (luckily) are web consulting and online marketing. As I’ve discovered, I’m a mediocre public speaker and not exactly a champion debater. I don’t have the world’s biggest Rolodex. But I’ve managed to find some areas that fit my comfort zone where I could excel.

3. Recognize that the most important aspects of book promotion are the ones you have little or no control over. Sure, spending time doing an interview with a science fiction fan site might get your name out there and sell 10 or 20 or 100 or 300 books. But the buyer at Borders or Barnes & Noble can give you thousands and thousands of book sales if he/she has enough confidence in the book to place a big order. The reverse, unfortunately, is also true.

4. Nobody knows when you fail… I did some research on discussion groups and ended up settling on Yahoo! Groups for an author forum. I created the forum, publicized it in half a dozen places, and nobody cared. So? I took down the link, I shrugged my shoulders, I moved on. People in the publishing biz might be able to track down your BookScan numbers and see how and where (and if) your book is selling, but nobody else is going to bother.

5. …But let everybody know when you succeed. Emphasize the positive. Spread the good word. Tell your friends. Brag about it on your blog.

6. You, the author, are the only one who really gets to decide if you succeeded or not. Today I got a note on MySpace from a reader saying this: “Don’t think I’m blowing smoke up your hindparts when I say that Infoquake is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read…. The depth and detail of this new world rank right up there with Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age.” It’s comments like that that make me sit back and think, y’know, I don’t care if I sell another copy of the book. I’ve done what I set out to do.

Okay, not really. Buy more. Please.

It’s a sunny morning in Orange County, California. Jimmy Carter is president of the United States, Mount St. Helens has just erupted, Richard Pryor will be setting himself on fire any day now. The Iranians have taken a number of Americans hostage in Tehran. Lots of people seem to be singing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” though I’m not quite sure why.

My mother takes my brother, my sisters, and me to see The Empire Strikes Back. I’m nine years old.

Star Wars has become my passion, as it is my older brother’s passion, as it is the passion of just about every boy I’ve ever met or heard of. I’m a late convert to the Church of Lucas, having stubbornly insisted for many months that Battlestar Galactica was the superior fictional universe.

Now I’m making up for lost time with a vengeance. I’ve got the first dozen issues of the Marvel Star Wars comic book series, I’ve got a TIE fighter, an X-wing fighter, a landspeeder, a Millennium Falcon, an interior set from the Death Star, every action figure from Greedo to Chewbacca to Hammerhead. My brother and I have worn the plastic light sabers of our Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader figurines down to nubs from fighting with them. (Our life-size plastic light sabers, however, are still in good shape.)

A few weeks ago, I have given in to sweet temptation and bought the Empire Strikes Back comic book published in mass-market paperback form. The cover is white and red. Even though I promise myself I won’t read it all the way through, I take several tantalizing peeks at the opening pages. There’s an ice planet. Luke and Han and Chewie are there.

There’s a TV special showing a behind-the-scenes look at the battle scene on Hoth, the painstaking art of stop-motion animation. I hear something about a new character being performed by Frank Oz.

Then finally, the day arrives. Saturday, May 24th or possibly May 25th — definitely a few days after opening day. The longest days of my life.

Mom hauls four kids in a blue Ford station wagon with wood paneling over to a theater in Costa Mesa (or was it Fountain Valley? Westminster?). We’re hours early. My brother and I haul ass as quickly as we can to the back of the line, nearly crying in despair to see it winding halfway around the theater. But we soon quit our moaning as we see the line snake its way far, far behind us. Suddenly our family is back in the vanguard. We’re prudent planners.

After an hour of torpid standing-around time — the minutes are stretched thin like taut rubber bands — the line moves. We enter the theater.

And somehow we find perfect seats, no small accomplishment for a party of five. Not too close, not too far. Directly in the center of the auditorium, no six-foot jackass sitting in the next row blocking our view. There’s probably candy. There’s always candy at the movies. Mom usually picks it up for a discount at Key Market and smuggles it into the theater in her purse.

The lights go out. My brother and I are wiggling in our seats. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

A symphonic blast of trumpets. The opening crawl.

The first time Mark Hamill appears on the screen, taking off his goggles atop that TaunTaun, the crowd erupts into applause. Cheers, jubilation. Luke Skywalker is back! This is the first time most of us have seen Mark Hamill since his car accident. His face looks different… but it’s still Luke.

The audience is tense as the battle of Hoth rages onscreen. The Imperial Walkers are easily the coolest fucking thing we have ever seen. We’re ducking and diving along with the poor Rebels, who are about to get their asses handed to them by the Empire. But it’s okay — this is an anticipated setback, a planned retreat.

Han Solo & Co. blast their way out of the Rebel base at literally the last possible instant. The menacing figure of Darth Vader emerges just in time to see the exhaust on the Millennium Falcon as the ship wings away. The audience explodes: a literal standing ovation. People are cheering, yelling.

Luke Skywalker finds his way to Dagobah and begins his tutelage under the Jedi Master Yoda, whose words are sage and mysterious and challenging in a way we’ve never quite experienced before. Yoda wants Luke to unlearn? What the hell? To white suburban Orange County kids who have remained largely insulated from the hippy, trippy ’70s, this isn’t Hollywood hokum… this is the fucking Port Huron Statement. This is subversive. Does Mom realize we’re watching this? Would our teachers approve?

Harrison Ford, in the meanwhile, by cavalierly dodging the Empire through fancy maneuver after fancy maneuver, has clearly demonstrated that he is the coolest dude in the history of the universe, ever ever ever. The chase through the asteroid field makes the Imperial Walkers seem like old news, especially now that the candy’s gone and the sugar high has kicked in.

Our heroes find their way to Cloud City.

And then something happens that’s beyond my nine-year-old imagination. The heroes start to lose. The android C-3PO, blown into bits. Han Solo, frozen in carbonite and sent off with the mysterious bounty hunter Boba Fett. Luke Skywalker’s hand neatly sliced off by the blade of the Dark Lord of the Sith.

And then —

I have absolutely no idea what’s coming next. None of the comic books or Saturday morning TV shows I’ve been digesting my whole life have prepared me for this moment. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. Gasps echo throughout the theater. Time pauses to catch its breath. His father? Never in the darkest corners of my imagination could I have predicted this. It’s a world-shattering revelation. I’m scared, I’m elated, I want to go home, I never want to leave.

The plunge off the bridge, the rescue, the daring escape. The credits.

The rest of the afternoon is a blur. My summer agenda has now been set. I have mysteries to ponder that will occupy much of my attention during the next few years. Was Darth Vader telling the truth? How could someone so noble as Luke be the child of a villain so black as Vader? And why didn’t Ben Kenobi tell him earlier? What point was Yoda trying to make by sending Luke into the cave to confront his phantom nemesis?

One thing is clear: this is not the same world that existed before the lights went down.

It will gradually become clear to me in those next few years what George Lucas was trying to say: The menace and nightmare and calculation that had seemed like some distant, external force in Star Wars is inside of us all. Luke Skywalker is Darth Vader. We are Darth Vader, each and every one of us.

Your grandkids will yawn when you try to tell them what the world was like in those heady days right after 9/11. They will roll their eyes when you talk about how shocking and revolutionary New Wave music was, or how much of an uproar the country was in over the Clinton impeachment. You’ll say “you just had to be there.”

If you’re an American male born somewhere in the late ’60s or early ’70s, you know. You remember. The Empire Strikes Back changed things forever.

And I was there.