(FYI, the announcement for this sampler mistakenly says that my excerpt is from 2006′s Infoquake. Rest assured, the 45 pages in the Pyr sampler are indeed from MultiReal.)

Also included in the sampler are excerpts from Joe Abercrombie‘s Before They Are Hanged (sequel to the acclaimed The Blade Itself); Kay Kenyon‘s A World Too Near (sequel to the equally acclaimed Bright of the Sky); Theodore Judson‘s The Martian General’s Daughter; Robert Silverberg‘s classic Son of Man; and two from Mike Resnick, Stalking the Unicorn and Stalking the Vampire.

But first, a few words about the excerpt from MultiReal.

What you’re reading in this sampler is the entire first section of the book, titled “Lessons Learned.” Three of these chapters are written from the point of view of a new character, Magan Kai Lee, the lieutenant executive of the Defense and Wellness Council. (Actually, he’s not entirely a new character. If you re-read Infoquake, you’ll notice that he makes a cameo appearance in chapter 5, though he’s not mentioned by name.) One chapter is a 40-year-old flashback written from Margaret Surina’s point of view. Only one chapter of this excerpt features Natch, the trilogy’s protagonist and central character. Jara, the series’ secondary protagonist, isn’t even mentioned in these five chapters, even though she plays a major part in MultiReal.

I always knew it was going to be difficult to create a suitable excerpt for this book. As I’ve written before, the middle book of a trilogy is an enormous challenge. I’ve made it doubly so by creating such a complicated backstory for the universe. Pity the poor opening chapters of MultiReal, because I’ve saddled them with all of these duties:

1. Re-introducing the important background concepts in the story (multi, bio/logic programming, creeds, L-PRACGs, MultiReal)
2. Re-introducing the important bits of background history (the Autonomous Revolt, the death of Marcus Surina)
3. Re-introducing the main characters (Natch, Horvil, and Jara) as well as the secondary characters (Len Borda, Margaret Surina, Benyamin, Merri, Serr Vigal, Quell, the Patel Brothers, and Brone)
4. Introducing several new characters (Magan Kai Lee, Papizon, Rey Gonerev, Ridgello, and Khann Frejohr)
5. Summarizing the important bits that happened in Infoquake
6. Setting up the conflicts for the rest of MultiReal
7. Engaging the reader so they’re interested in reading more (or buying the book in the first place)

I concluded that it’s nearly impossible to cover all of this ground without turning the opening chapters into one big, fat gelatinous glob of exposition. So when you finally do get your grubby hands on MultiReal (have I mentioned that it’s available for pre-order on Amazon?), you’ll find that Appendix A is a rather detailed summary of Infoquake. It will be interesting to see if that summary is enough for those who haven’t read Infoquake to still enjoy MultiReal. At the very least, I hope it will jostle the memories of those who did read the first book, but have forgotten some of its details.

One last thing to note: for those who haven’t read Infoquake, there will be spoilers in this five-chapter sample of MultiReal. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I don’t think there’s anything in the first few chapters of book 2 that would spoil your experience of book 1. (And if you’re that concerned — well, you could always go ahead and start reading the first seven chapters of Infoquake instead.)

Go. Read. Enjoy. Buy. Discuss.

Here are some things you can expect to see when MultiReal finally hits the shelves:

• The death of at least one (and possibly two) major characters
• The return of the group in black robes, and the answer to the question of who was behind the black code attack on Natch
• A hands-on demonstration of how an enraged Islander delivers smackdown justice (hint: you need a big-ass Islander shock baton)
• Many more details about the MultiReal program, including what happens when two users pit MultiReal programs against one another
• A vicious power struggle between Natch and Jara for control over the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp
• The hidden truth behind the death of Marcus Surina and the onset of the Economic Plunge of the 310s
• The introduction of several new pivotal characters, including:
  • Magan Kai Lee, Len Borda’s right-hand man
  • Papizon, Rey Gonerev and Ridgello, Magan’s loyal aides
  • Khann Frejohr, the newly elected speaker of the Congress of L-PRACGs
  • Pierre Loget, bio/logic programmer and rival to Natch
  • Geronimo, some anonymous dimwit who looks almost exactly like Natch
  • Berilla, the infamous queen bee of Horvil and Ben’s family
• More slippery dealings by Frederic and Petrucio Patel
• A look at what the Defense and Wellness Council is really up to, including several chapters from the POV of Len Borda and Magan Kai Lee
• Scenes set on the virtual sex gratification network known as the Sigh, and a nice fat appendix about the workings of that network which will probably frighten my wife when she reads it
• Chapters set in:
  • Old Chicago, a bombed-out city now inhabited mainly by the diss
  • Melbourne, the city of the central government
  • D-WeCC, the hidden headquarters of the Defense and Wellness Council
  • London, locale of Berilla’s cavernous West End estate
• A look at the inner workings of the Prime Committee, including a section that does for governmental hearings what Infoquake did for product demos
• An explanation from Brone about how MultiReal is pivotal to his impending “Revolution of Selfishness”
• A climactic scene full of surprises, dartgun battles, double-crossings, quick escapes, and multiple realities
• Another set of appendices exploring the world of the Jump 225 trilogy, and a thorough synopsis of the events of Infoquake

A few interesting facts about MultiReal:

• As it stands right now, the book is 137,525 words long, or 452 manuscript pages. (Compare that to Infoquake‘s approximately 125,000 words and 410 pages.) I expect the book to grow by a couple thousand words in the last rounds of editing and rewriting.
• There are currently 47 chapters (compared to Infoquake‘s 35), and I will probably be adding at least one more.
• MultiReal is divided into six sections, titled:
  1. Lessons Learned
  2. The Nothingness at the Center of the Universe
  3. Variables in Flux
  4. Madness and Freedom
  5. Possibilities 2.0
  6. New Beginnings
• According to the “last saved” date for the first draft of the first chapter of MultiReal, I’ve been working on this book since February 6, 2001. (But keep in mind that there was virtually no work done on the book between mid-2001 and late 2004, when I was revising and then attempting to find an agent and publisher for Infoquake.)

So what’s the next step? The next step is for me to send the book off to my “first readers.” My first readers are a handful of friends and family that a) know me well enough to tell me honestly which parts of the book suck, and b) know me well enough that they know what I’m getting at, even if it’s not always conveyed in the book at present time.

When are you, the readers, going to be able to get your hands on MultiReal? Not for a while, unfortunately. When I have more definitive information, I’ll let you know. And don’t worry, I’ll be doing a ton of contests, giveaways, con appearances, readings, signings, and other promotional effluvia in the months surrounding the book’s release, so you definitely won’t miss it. Like with Infoquake, I’m hoping to be able to post a bunch of free material on the website, including the first x chapters and the complete appendices.

And as for book three?

Book three of the Jump 225 Trilogy will be titled Geosynchron. Just so we’re clear from the outset: this is, indeed, a trilogy in every sense of the word. It ends, finally and definitively, with the third book. All loose ends will be tied up, all story lines will come to a conclusion. There will be more major characters dying, but I promise you that Ron and Hermione will make it through okay.

When will Geosynchron be done? Jesus, I have no idea. What I do have is a woefully out-of-date first draft circa mid-2001. So if I should be hit by a bus tomorrow, you’ll at least be able to figure out where I was going with all this. Right now, my wife is the only one who knows how the trilogy’s going to end, and she ain’t tellin’.

Of course, anyone who would like to buy me a brand new 17-inch MacBook Pro will get full access to MultiReal months ahead of publication, as well as a preview of Geosynchron and quite possibly sexual favors. On the Sigh, of course.

World War II bombardier John Yossarian wants to know if he can be exempt from flying any more missions because he’s insane. Of course, comes the reply, but in order to be declared insane you have to consult a doctor, and only someone of compos mentis would consult a doctor.

Catch-22.

Here’s another one: an aging novelist wants to end his career with a novel as brilliant and innovative as his first. But the only way he can be truly original is by pirating from the first book, which makes him just another has-been stuck in a slump.

Sadly enough, that’s the predicament novelist Joseph Heller has written himself into with his new novel, Closing Time, which publisher Simon & Schuster is billing as the sequel to his groundbreaking 1961 work Catch-22. A sprawling domestic satire that tracks down Catch protagonist John Yossarian fifty years later, Closing Time pales not only in comparison to the rest of the Heller oeuvre, but to many of his imitators’ works as well.

The Yossarian we meet in Closing Time has decided, after a lifetime of lifeless copy writing and advertising jobs, to throw ethics to the wind and help old World War II cohort Milo Minderbinder sell his M & M E & A Sub-Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike Offensive Attack Bomber to the government. Yossarian quells his ethical dilemmas by reasoning that a) Milo won’t actually build the bomber once he’s got the money for it, b) Yossarian will probably be dead before the first plane makes it off the assembly line, and c) Milo’s paying him good money.

Yossarian only moonlights as a war profiteer, however. He’s also in charge of planning the most expensive, wasteful wedding ever to grace the Big Apple, and he’s decided to stage it at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. With an exorbitant million-dollar wedding cake and a cast of actors playing the various prostitutes, thugs, and drug pushers that normally inhabit the terminal, the wedding gives Heller ample opportunity to display his trademark venom at the absurdities of twentieth-century life.

Unfortunately, Heller chose to mix the narratives of two additional protagonists with the further adventures of John Yossarian. These chapters devoted to fellow septuagenarians Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitz move by at a snail’s pace, filled mostly with tedious reminiscences about the heyday of Coney Island and whining Andy Rooneyesque diatribes about the state of today’s youth.

Heller’s main problem in concocting a sequel to Catch-22, however, is that its predecessor was too successful. Back in the early ’60s before civil disobedience became fashionable, the idea of, say, Yossarian sitting naked in a tree during a fellow pilot’s funeral was unbelievably caustic and biting. In the ’90s, that type of wit has become the mainstream in humor. Today you can get something equally raw from your garden-variety cable comedian, or even a mediocre episode of “The Simpsons.”

There’s also a strange sense of ironic self-awareness running through Closing Time that gives the book an aura of recycled goods. Winking references are made to Catch-22s and a writer named “Joey Heller”; Rabinowitz rubs elbows with the author’s old buddy, Kurt Vonnegut, in the maple syrup factories of Dresden, Germany; even Yossarian’s courtship of his nurse bears striking resemblance to the real-life courtship of Heller and his nurse related in the autobiographical No Laughing Matter.

So what’s left? Plenty of jokes directed at the video game junky Vice-President with the Secret Service code name “Little Prick,” who’s obviously supposed to be Dan Quayle. (Haven’t we all heard enough of those jokes?) There’s also a smattering of the old vaudevillian Heller dialogues, such as this one in which Milo Minderbinder and pals go to bat for his stealth bomber before a government commission:

“And what does a flying wing look like?”

“Other flying wings,” Wintergreen interposed adroitly, with Milo struck dumb by a query he had not anticipated.

“And what do other flying wings look like?”

“Our flying wing,” answered Milo, his composure restored.

“Will it look,” asked a major, “like the old Stealth?”

“No. Only in appearance.”

Scenes like the previous one show that Heller can still be lots of fun when he wants to. But most of the rest of Closing Time is neither fun nor particularly insightful, and the book’s apocalyptic ending — curiously swiped from the Stanley Kubrick/Terry Southern film Dr. Strangelove — is an exercise in depression without purpose.

Joseph Heller was right in the introductory note to his first novel: there’s only one catch, and that’s Catch-22.