I’ve now gone ahead and done the same thing for MultiReal. You can now read online the first drafts of MultiReal‘s chapter 1, along with footnotes and commentary about each draft. The big difference between the Infoquake drafts and the MultiReal drafts is this: for the latter book, there were thirty-five of them. Yes, thirty-five drafts of chapter 1. Told you I’m something of a perfectionist. (Keep in mind that most of these first drafts were simply rehashes of prior drafts, and most of them are incomplete.)

Instead of posting all thirty-five drafts up on my website, I’ve chosen to simply post the best or most representative samples of the eight different directions I tried. Along with the final published version, of course.

So among the abandoned concepts you can read about in these drafts are: Magan Kai Lee as ruthless martial arts expert (draft 1), a bureaucratic smackdown between rival governments about the weather (draft 17), Horvil fascinated by advertising (draft 18), and Henry Osterman trekking off to Harper’s Ferry to commit suicide (draft 29).

Quick excerpt from draft 29, my favorite abandoned version of chapter 1:

Henry Osterman was dying.

He stumbled into the provincial town of Harper on his own two feet, a pallid scarecrow of a man, his hair greasy, his clothes tattered, his fingernails curling in on themselves like shriveled worms after the rain.

Nobody could say how he had gotten there. The roads leading to Harper had been pulverized a quarter of a millennium ago by the wrath of thinking machines run amok. Tube trains and hoverbirds were technologies for a theoretical future when the world had learned to live without fossil fuels; multi and teleportation were the pipe dreams of lunatics. To get to Harper these days, you needed either a strong horse or a boat limber enough to steer through the debris clogging the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. Osterman had neither.

The city itself was barely worth the effort. A few dozen dilapidated buildings huddled together at the bottom of a hill, that was all. The more prosperous cities nearby had pieced together a fragile shell of trade from the shards of yesterday’s civilization, but so far Harper had little to contribute. Still, you could get three radio stations again in Harper, and sometimes on clear nights you could see the feeble blink of a Chinese satellite. The local music scene was bustling. Drinking water was almost drinkable. Progress.

Hopefully this will prove useful to writers looking for some insight into the process, if not for future scholars at the Edelman Studies departments of major universities worldwide.

• Readings in Baltimore and Northern Virginia Next Week. On Tuesday, September 5, at 7:00 P.M., I will be making an appearance at the Barnes & Noble in White Marsh, MD to promote Infoquake. And on Thursday, September 7, at 7:30 P.M., I’ll be reading and signing at the Barnes & Noble in Reston, VA. If you’re in the area, come along and bring your books for me to sign. Or better yet, buy more!
• SFFWorld Calls Infoquake “THE Science Fiction Book of the Year.” Rob Bedford of SFFWorld has published the official SFFWorld review of Infoquake, saying: “The manner in which people who experienced Dune upon its publication speak about Herbert’s opus is not dissimilar to the feeling Infoquake elicits — the genre might not be quite the same after this book…. Infoquake is a stunning debut novel by a lucid, precise, and talented new voice in the genre…. This may be THE science fiction book of the year.” Rob goes even further on his blog, calling Infoquake “THE science fiction novel of the year, if not the past five years.”
• Rave Reviews from Meme Therapy, Fantasy Magazine and Bookgasm. Three more outstanding reviews for Infoquake that make me literally blush:
  • Meme Therapy. The science fiction/technology blog Meme Therapy (which recently interviewed me) published a 4-star review, saying “Infoquake definitely hooks in the reader, and I for one can’t wait to get my grubby wee paws on the second installment.”
  • Fantasy Magazine. The upcoming issue of Fantasy Magazine calls Infoquake “an entertaining and intelligent debut” and states that “the novel also addresses weighty themes: the destructive price of greed, the unchanging relentlessness of the human drive to innovate and to compete.”
  • Bookgasm. Ryun Patterson of Bookgasm said in his rave review: “Infoquake is a triumph of speculation. Edelman has foreseen a nanotech future of warring corporations and stock markets of personal enhancement in which both the good and the bad of the present day are reflected with an even hand and startling clarity…. it’s Wall Street meets Neuromancer.” (Pattersun also praises my publisher, Pyr, saying that “Pyr is quickly becoming the standard by which all other sci-fi imprints are judged.”)
• Flickr Photos from Infoquake Launch Party and WorldCon. I’ve uploaded a handful of photos to Flickr both of the August 12 Infoquake launch party (featuring the world famous Infocake) and of a few events at the WorldCon Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, CA this past week. Okay, so Ansel Adams isn’t exactly rising from the dead to praise the artistic quality of these photos, but he’s not spinning in his grave either. (In fact, we kind of like Ansel exactly how he is right now.)
• Nine Drafts of Infoquake‘s Chapter 1. I recently posted all nine drafts of the first chapter of Infoquake onto my website, with footnotes to comment on the editing process along the way. From the blog: “Now the point of posting these drafts is not to dazzle everyone with how wise and witty I’ve become. (Although if anyone is dazzled, I’m enough of an egomaniac to take it, no questions asked.) The point is that I thought writing neophytes might be interested in a behind-the-scenes look at what novelists go through in the revision process.”

Believe it or not, there are still more reviews pending, which I’ll link to as I get them. Also in the coming weeks, watch for a full-length audio interview with me (clips of which are supposed to appear on NPR at some point) and another web interview as well.

My most sincere thanks to all those who have lent their support to my efforts to get the word out about Infoquake!