Category Archives: science fiction

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Some assorted news:
1) Avogadro Corp hit #2 on the technothriller list, and A.I. Apocalypse hit #5:
Both books catapulted to the top of the technothrillers category this week.
Thank you to everyone who bought a copy, posted reviews, or told friends! 
2) If you’ve been waiting to get A.I. Apocalypse via Smashwords for your iPad, Nook, or other device, it’s available now.
3) If you haven’t seen them, check out this week’s collection of robot videos from IEEE Spectrum. There’s some amazing ones in there, including this one showing their dragonfly drone from the 1970s:

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Suicide Girls has published an excerpt of the final piece of The Rapture of the Nerds by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow. Here’s a bit:

The Burj Khalifa’s in-room TV gets an infinity of channels, evidently cross-wired from the cable feed for Hilbert’s hotel. It uses some evolutionary computing system to generate new programs on the fly, every time you press the channel-up button. This isn’t nearly as banal as Huw imagined it might be when she read about it on the triangular-folded cardboard standup that materialized in her hand as she reached for the remote. That’s because — as the card explained — the Burj has enough computation to model captive versions of Huw at extremely high speed, and to tailor the programming by sharpening its teeth against these instances-in-a-bottle so that every press of the button brings up eye-catching, attention-snaring material: soft-core pornography that involves pottery, mostly.

She goes on to have angst over that fact that each button press is creating and killing hordes of herself.

You can read the full excerpt here. The Rapture of the Nerds is available on Amazon.

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A few days ago, Jason Glaspey, a prominent member of Portland’s tech and startup community, and the man behind PaleoPlan,  approached me and said he would be doing a review of Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears on Silicon Florist.

Avogadro Corp is my first novel. It’s a techno-thriller about the accidental creation of an artificial intelligence at the world’s largest Internet company and the subsequent race to contain it, as it starts to manipulate people, transfer funds, and arm itself.

It’s set almost entirely in Portland, Oregon. Readers have enjoyed the references to Portland’s coffee scene, imaging a 10,000 employee tech company in downtown Portland, and the realistic portrayal of AI emergence. Some early feedback includes:

  • “jaw-dropping tale about how something as innocuous as email can subvert an entire organization”
  • “a terrific, and stunningly believable, account of how the first sentient artificial intelligence might accidentally arise”
  • “HAL, the self aware CPU from 2001 a Space Odyssey is a kitten compared to ELOPe”
  • “a startling, feasible examination of the emergence of artificial intelligence”

It’s available in paperback, for the kindle, and inepub format for a variety of other e-readers. And so far it’s doing great – averaging 5 star reviews on Amazon.

Jason knew I had been offering a Kindle Fire and some Amazon gift certificates in exchange for help promoting Avogadro Corp. He asked if I would keep it running a little longer until his review came out. That didn’t seem quite fair to people who had already done so much to help get the word out.

So instead I’m going to give away a second Kindle Fire.

Here’s the deal:

  1. Spread the word in the next week! Send people to this blog post or the Avogadro Corp page on Amazon. Here are some ideas: Facebook “like”, Facebook sharing, retweets, Twitter, e-mail, e-mail signature, blog posts, or a review if you’ve already read it. You can sing about it from street corners too, but this may get you funny looks. (Please stick to appropriate sharing to audiences who will appreciate learning about a good book. I don’t want to encourage spammy behavior.)
  2. By 9am PST on Dec. 31 (ya know, the last day of the year), leave a comment on this blog post telling me what you did. If possible, quantify the impact (clicks, page views, etc.).

I’ll consider the first 20 submissions, if I get that many, and from the 3 that I think did the best job (subjective, I know), I’ll pick one to receive the Kindle Fire. The 2 runner ups will receive a $25 Amazon gift card. Void where prohibited, robots and artificial intelligences under 21 not allowed, no prize awarded if the AI apocalypse occurs before the contest ends, etc., etc. Recipients will be announced within a few days after the 31st. (If you don’t want the Kindle Fire, you can donate it to a school or non-profit.)

Most of all, I hope you enjoy Avogadro Corp.

Thanks,
Will

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For those of you that haven’t heard, after a two year journey, my novel Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears is published!

Avogadro Corp is a techno-thriller about the accidental creation of an artificial intelligence at the world’s largest Internet company, and the subsequent race to contain it, as it starts to manipulate people, transfer funds, and arm itself.

It’s available in paperback, for the kindle, and in epub format for a variety of other e-readers. 

If you’ve already bought a copy – THANK YOU! It means so much to me. 

If not, I hope you’ll buy a copy and enjoy it, or consider giving it as a gift to someone who loves techno-thrillers or science fiction.

The Next Step

Writing Avogadro Corp was incredibly fun, and the path to publication was a great learning experience. But now that it’s published, the next challenge I face is to help it rise above the noise of thousands of other books. 

Here’s just a few of the things that help a book get noticed: sharing it on Facebook or twitter, buying it or giving it as a gift, providing a review on Amazon, blog posts that link to it, emails to friends about it.

Anything you can do to help support my book would be tremendous!

Bonus: A Free Kindle Fire

If you don’t yet have a Kindle Fire and would like one for free, I’m giving one away. This is a thank you for all the feedback and help I received over the last six months. (As usual, I was inspired by Tim Ferriss to do this, and in fact won the Kindle Fire from Tim in his own book promotion contest.)
Here’s the deal:
  1. Spread the word in the next 7 days! Send people to this blog post or the Avogadro Corp page on Amazon. Here are some ideas: Facebook “like”, Facebook sharing, retweets, Twitter, e-mail, e-mail signature, blog posts, or a review if you’ve already read it. You can sing about it from street corners too, but this may get you funny looks.
  2. By 9am PST on Dec. 18 (next Sunday), leave a comment on this blog post telling me what you did. If possible, quantify the impact (clicks, page views, etc.).
I’ll consider the first 50 submissions, if I get that many, and from the 5 that I think did the best job (subjective, I know), I’ll pick one to receive the Kindle Fire. The 4 runner ups will receive a $25 Amazon gift card. Void where prohibited, robots and artificial intelligences under 21 not allowed, no prize awarded if the AI apocalypse occurs before the contest ends, etc., etc. Winners will be announced next week.

Again, even if you don’t want the Kindle Fire, anything you can do to help promote Avogadro Corp is still awesome!

Resources

If you take this on, here’s a few links that might help:
Happy holidays!

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A touch of Farmer, a pinch of LeGuin
OryCon 33
My apologies for any misspellings or butcherings of names.
  • Ann Wilkes: Writes science fiction and fantasy, mostly short stories, one novel, compared to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Science Fiction and Other ODDysseys. 
  • Amy Thomson: Author of Virtual Girl
  • Andrew Fuller: Short fiction, scifi, fantasy, and horror. Also edit online magazine 3lodedeye.
  • Rat Vukcevich: Last novel is Boarding Instructions. Writes around the edge of scifi and fantasy. 
  • Claude Lalumière: writer, editor. 
  • Influences?
  • Claude: As bookseller back in the 90s, I was amazed by certain authors. “How did they do that?” So I would read and reread these authors to figure out what they did. Primarily their short fiction. J.G. Ballard. Bob Silverberg. R.A. Lafferty. Also Unquenchable Fire
  • Ray: My influences reflect my discovery of reading. Back in the 50s and 60s. Boy engineer and Boy scientists. Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Philip Jose Farmer’s World of Tiers series. Ray Bradbury — he opens your eyes to what can be done with language. J.G. Ballard – his structure and vision. Precise and elegant. He can take big concepts like in Crash, and little things like Concrete Island. What you can do in a novel – I cannot recommend it too highly.
    • in school, in the 60s, protesting the war. kurt vonnegut turned out to be a major influence. Slaughterhouse Five.
    • R.A. Lafferty. 
    • Daemon Knight’s …
    • Typed in an entire manuscript, just to understand what the author was doing. 
  • Ann Wilkes:
    • when I was a kid, I was watching TV when you guys were reading.
    • Douglas Adams. In the later books, the humor began to run thin. To keep doing the same tongue in cheek in the same voice without changing, it was too much.
    • David Brin: 
      • Practice Effect by David Brin: “How the hell did he do that?” He takes physics and turns it on its head. You take materials and the more you use them, the better they get. [This was one of my favorites too – Will]
      • Uplift Wars
    • Orson Scott Card: Ender’s Game. The scope of the cultures
    • Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
    • The Void trilogy by Peter Hamilton. 
  • Andrew Fuller
    • as a kid, it was steven king, lovecraft.
    • I have to thank a teacher who said “stop reading steven king and just read other stuff”
    • Ray Bradbury.
      • the nostalgia, the atmosphere.
    • Collection of short stories called Blow Up. The House Takeover. This family has to keep moving from room to room because there’s something taking over the house. 
    • Forever War
    • Mind Bridge
    • Octavia Butler
    • Wild Seed
    • short fiction by Ursula LeGuin
    • hardboiled: Hammett, Chandler.
  • Amy Thomson
    • I was like a lit match and gasoline: I took off with reading.
    • I read the entire Time Life science series because I could only get six books a day from the library.
    • Hans Christian Andersen. 
    • I would get $10/month to buy books from my mother. Back in 1971, 72, 73 that was a lot of f…ing money.
    • Ray Bradbury
      • where I discover prose style
    • Dunseney
    • Everything in the Ballinetine Fantasy series
    • Anne McCaffrey
    • Wilhelm and Sturgeon.
    • Read ton of Darkover
    • Every female superhero comic
    • After college, Gene Wolfe, Delany, Joanna Rush
    • Got  job as a Locus reader for short fiction. Jeff Reinman, …
    • Octavia Butler
    • Travel books: My Journey to Lhasa
  • Who most influenced us that doesn’t write genre
    • Andrew: Mystery and hardboiled writers.
      • The History of Salt book. Kurlandsky. Cod and salt drive the British Navy and allowed them to colonize the world.
    • Ann Wilkes
      • Madeline Lingal
      • Eugenia Price: Atmosphere. Wrote a book set in islands of south carolina.
      • Spy novels: great for learning pacing. Jack Higgins. Leon Yuris – reluctant spy. 
    • Ray Vukcevich
      • William Burroughs: Junkie and Queer. Naked Lunch. Steamrolls over you with its honesty.
      • Italian: Dino Buzzati – The Falling Girl
        • Sudden Fiction collection. 
      • Ron Carlson
        • Bigfoot stole my wife
        • Can nail the emotional content right into the structure in a fascinating way
      • Truman Capote: his short fiction
    • Claude:
      • Breakfast at Tiffany’s
      • Jack Kerby – unbridled creativity. more ideas per page.
      • Major films of David Lynch – master of storytelling. What to reveal and not to reveal to properly tell a story. Blue Velvet. Mullholland Drive. 
      • LeGuin: 
        • Always Coming Home. Reverse archeology. She digs for a society that doesn’t exist yet.
          • A sense of yearning that is so powerful.
        • story of a fictional european country. very subtle stories. Learn how to leave at the right moment. Don’t overstay your welcome.
  • Influence writers active right now: