(No, not really.)

Until now, my answer has always been, It’s not my decision, pal. I don’t own the electronic rights. And don’t call me a jackass, punk.

To which they reply… well, you get the picture.

But as of today, I can now join the ranks of the electronically published. Yes, via the Pyr-o-mania blog, I see that Infoquake is now available on the Amazon Kindle. Go check it out on Amazon. Not only is it available, but it’s one of the first five titles available on Kindle from Pyr. (For the record, the others are: Justina Robson’s Silver Screen and Going Under, Mike Resnick’s Starship: Pirate, and Lou Anders’ anthology Fast Forward 1.)

I’m told there are a lot more Pyr titles in the works — including, yes, MultiReal — but there’s no telling exactly when they’re going to hit the street. So hopefully by some point next year, you’ll be able to read the entire Jump 225 trilogy electronically. You won’t be able to project it holographically on your retinas yet, unless you’re Ray Kurzweil, but here’s hoping we’ll be able to do that in our lifetimes too.

(And by the way… yes, I would love to be able to post a picture of what Infoquake actually looks like on the Kindle. But unfortunately, I don’t own one and don’t anticipate buying one anytime soon. So if anyone does get a chance to email me a nice high quality digital photo of Infoquake on the Kindle, I’d really appreciate it.)

The cover painting is once again by the incomparable Hugo Award-winning artist Stephan Martiniere, whose paintings for the covers of Infoquake and MultiReal have been blowing minds for many a month.

And here is the catalog copy for the book, which provides something of a spoiler (though a necessary one) for the cliffhanger at the end of MultiReal.

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.

I’ll have more to say about this later, but figured that it couldn’t hurt to just post this stuff asap.

(Oh, and if you’re so inclined, the book’s now available for pre-order on Amazon.)

So it’s comforting to see that the visionary Ray Kurzweil (whose The Age of Spiritual Machines I heartily recommend) has, in effect, completely endorsed my idea of multi technology. Here’s what he says in an interview with GOOD Magazine:

By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain (that will get there noninvasively, through the capillaries) will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. So if you want to go into virtual reality the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were actually in the virtual environment. So this will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses. You will have a body in these virtual-reality environments that you can control just like your real body, but it does not need to be the same body that you have in real reality. We’ll be able to interact with people in any way in these virtual-reality environments. That will replace most travel, but we’ll also have new travel technologies for our real bodies using nanotechnology.

Contrast that with how I describe the multi network in the appendices for Infoquake:

A multi projection is a virtual body that “exists” in real space. While the multied body is only an illusion created by neural manipulation, it can interact with real (”meat”) bodies in a way almost indistinguishable from physical human interaction…. The multi network depends on two key components: (1) the trillions of microscopic bots that process and relay sensory information to the network, and (2) neural OCHREs that manipulate the mind into “seeing” the sights, “hearing” the sounds, and “feeling” the sensations of the network. Similarly, those who interact with multi projections allow neural manipulation to trick the mind into believing the virtual bodies are present.

The big difference between good ol’ Ray and me is that a) he actually knows what he’s talking about, and b) I didn’t figure we’d get this working for another few hundred years. Kurzweil thinks we’ll be sending multi projections around the globe about the same time that Malia Obama gets her Masters degree. I think many of Kurzweil’s predictions are a tad on the optimistic side — he thinks the singularity will happen, oh, any day now — but basically sound.

(Thanks to Richard Strayer for pointing out the interview.)

First, I’ve been interviewed by Shaun Farrell for the Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing podcast. It’s a rather lengthy interview — 30 minutes or so — and it covers everything from whether Natch is the “hero” of Jump 225, why the series is titled Jump 225 in the first place, what is the nature of Natch’s drive to succeed, and why Moonwatcher from 2001 was in a way the first Natch.

Stargate writer and producer Joseph Mallozzi posted my answers to his book club questions about Infoquake recently. The group really seemed to delve into the book and had a very insightful discussion, not only here, but during several days of preceding blog posts. Topics covered include my favorite character, how likely I think the Infoquake future is, and why (or whether) the book ends abruptly. Excerpt:

Iamza writes: “I’m not so sure I really understand MultiReal. As outlined by Margaret, it sounds kind of great — a chance to have things turn out exactly as you wanted. But what happens when the batter wants to hit a six and the bowler wants to get his tenth wicket for no runs (hah, take that, baseball analogies! Give me cricket any day of the week). Whose reality ultimately wins out — or do both batter and bowler split off into separate universes, each achieving their individual goal? For every individual who’s installed the MultiReal program, are there a zillion universes in which things go wrong, and only one in which everything is golden.

DLE: Now you see the big dilemma with MultiReal technology. One of the main subplots in book 2 is how to resolve conflicts very much like you describe. Natch, Jara & Co. discover that there are a lot of broad sociological implications in how MultiReal resolves these conflicts. For instance: how do you charge customers for all those realities? Do you charge a flat fee, or do you charge for each alternate reality they pick? If you choose the latter, does that mean the rich would automatically win every argument?

(Admit it, you’re just making these funny cricket terms up. “The batter wants to hit a six”? “Getting his tenth wicket”? Surely you should not be using such language on a family blog like Mr. Mallozzi’s.)

• Charlie Jane Anders of science fiction megasite io9 has just published an interview with me. I dig the title: MultiReal Is Your Dot-Com Nightmare Writ Large. Topics covered include my progress on writing Geosynchron, whether there are any good trilogy closers, how MultiReal technology really works, and whether there are Natch and Jara “shippers” out there. (Yeah, I had to go look it up too.) In case you’ve forgotten, io9 are the lovely, lovely folks who gave MultiReal a glowing review and named the book one of their top SF novels of 2008.
• Meanwhile, Joseph Mallozzi, writer and executive producer for TV’s Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, has been hosting a discussion about Infoquake on his blog. But this ain’t just any ol’ blog book chat. Joe’s blog attracts an incredibly devoted fan base, with dozens of people participating in the discussion and asking detailed questions. I’ve now got all the questions in one big Word document. Joe will be publishing another post with all of my answers soon. In the meantime, read Joe’s original review, the first book discussion round-up, and the second book discussion round-up. Make sure to browse through the comments on each article.
• Finally, SF Signal has published another of its famed Mind Meld columns, this one on the topic “Who Are Your Literary Influences in the Ongoing Conversation of Science Fiction?” Not only did I contribute a few paragraphs (scroll to the bottom), but so did Mike Resnick, Tobias Buckell, Peter Watts, Paul Di Filippo, Jay Lake, Sean Williams, Paul Levinson, S. Andrew Swann, Stephen Hunt, Minister Faust, Julie E. Czerneda, and David Levine. Whew! I listed my two biggest SF influences as Frank Herbert and William Gibson, which should come as no surprise to anyone.

Doyle really didn’t have enough material to fill four novels and fifty-six short stories’ worth of paper. The plots are fairly trite, the mysteries are sometimes clever but mostly commonplace, the insights into human nature are fairly shallow, and the prose is expedient if unremarkable… But there is one thing Doyle had that makes up for all the other shortcomings: he had a frickin’ incredible character in Sherlock Holmes himself…

I find that when I think back on the great stories I’ve read in my lifetime, SF/F or otherwise, it’s generally the characters that I remember. That’s why I can barely remember a single plot from the original Star Trek, but I know the triad of McCoy, Spock and Bones like the back of my hand. (Same goes for The Next Generation, though the only truly great character from that show was Picard.) That’s why I remember Long John Silver but barely remember Treasure Island. And that’s why, for all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s insane worldbuilding and linguistic inventiveness, the first thing I think of when I think of The Lord of the Rings is Gandalf leaning on his staff (or Gollum writhing on the ground pining for his preccccccccious).

Go make my editor happy, and post your comments on the Pyr-o-mania blog.

Update 2/18/09 @ 12:41 PM: Fixed the link to the blog piece.

• MultiReal Is Eligible for Best Novel.
  Book 2 of my Jump 225 trilogy and the sequel to Infoquake, published by Pyr in July 2008. The book continues the story of far-future software entrepreneur Natch in his struggle to maintain control over the MultiReal technology which has fallen into his hands. In MultiReal, he’s got to cope with scheming politicians, power-hungry intelligence agency executives, an old childhood enemy, and a rebellion by his own fiefcorp apprentices. (Plus it’s got one hell of a dartgun battle between three different factions, and a scene on the virtual reality sex network featuring triple-breasted mermaids.) Accolades for the novel so far include listing on Best of the Year lists from io9, Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, SFFWorld, and Post-Weird Thoughts, and lots of shiny praise from the likes of Locus, SCI FI Weekly, Publishers Weekly, Robert J. Sawyer, etc.
• “Mathralon” Is Eligible for Best Short Story.
  My story from The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two, “Mathralon” concerns a planet of oppressed miners laboring in obscurity for a ruthless combine that may or may not even exist. It’s told in the first-person plural (Greek chorus) point of view, and it’s somewhat unique in that it has no characters, no dialogue, and no plot. Curious? Go read the story in full, or listen to my reading of it on my appearance on “Hour of the Wolf.” The story got a terrific reception when I read it at both the Library of Congress and the KGB Bar, and it’s made Post-Weird Thoughts’ list of top short stories for 2008.

If you’re so inclined, you might also want to nominate my two editors this year, Lou Anders of Pyr (whose Fast Forward 2 anthology has a great shot at a Hugo nom) and George Mann of Solaris.

Fast Forward, the Arlington, VA-based cable science fiction TV show, conducted a 19-minute interview with me a couple of weeks ago. (Video requires QuickTime 7, but there’s an audio-only version available too.) Interviewer Tom Schaad really seems to have read Infoquake and MultiReal carefully. In our discussion before the cameras started rolling, he picked up on a number of hints in the margins of the books that nobody else has remarked on. (Hint: In which orbital colony did noted philanderer Marcus Surina die? And in which orbital colony was a certain fatherless character born?) Topics in the interview proper include MultiReal, technological paradigm shifts, the difficulty of writing the middle book in a trilogy, ethical systems in a post-religious world, and how the Jump 225 Trilogy is all about trying to find balance.

And blogger Fábio Fernandes has posted a seven-question interview with me on Post-Weird Thoughts. Topics covered include the influence of Dune and William Gibson, my favorite novels, the timeline of the Jump 225 trilogy in relation to today, and Geosynchron. Quick excerpt:

What can we expect of Geosynchron, the next novel of the Infoquake series? (BTW, it will really be a trilogy or there will be other stories in that universe?)

Geosynchron will definitely be the last novel of the trilogy. (I’m not precluding the possibility of writing additional novels in this universe down the road, but this particular story will come to an end at the conclusion of book 3.) As for what’s in store in the final book… You’re going to see the characters go off to places we haven’t been before, like the Pacific Islands and the orbital colony of 49th Heaven. You’re going to meet some of the Pharisees. You’re going to see a lot more of Quell and delve into his relationship with Margaret Surina. And you’re going to see a big ending that involves military strikes, philosophical debate, and (of course) creative marketing techniques. I think I can promise that it’s going to be a very, very unique conclusion. Currently the schedule is for the book to hit the stores in early 2010.

I’m told that Post-Weird Thoughts will have reviews of Infoquake and MultiReal up shortly as well.

Go. Watch. Read. Contemplate. Comment.

Update 12/20/08 @ 5:07 pm: Added embedded Google video.

Abigail Blakeway Edelman, born October 31st at 8:02 am, 6 pounds 5 ounces.

Benjamin Blakeway Edelman, born October 31st at 8:04 am, 6 pounds 2 ounces.

Mom and babies are healthy, Dad’s a little frazzled but ecstatically happy.