Wednesday, April 27, 2005
I got an email from my literary agent; an editor has passed on my new book, "The Postbiological Cosmos," because, apparently, he didn't think the subject matter (cybernetics, nanotechnology, AI, and posthuman philosophy) was "fresh" enough. Whatever. The good news is that she's taking my proposal to another (possibly bigger) publisher. I'm actually pretty confident someone will pick this up eventually and I can't wait to roll up my sleeves and do justice to it. Give me a green light, somebody.
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14 comments:
Sorry man...you gotta cut the "Cutting Edge" even further. Just make some shit up, or go the otherway...instead of nanotech, go Macrotech. Good Luck.
Rudy Rucker's written (very speculatively) about "femtotechnology," which makes nanotech look coarse.
The problem may be that the zeitgist is moving backward and not forward, making anyone looking forward out of tune with the times...
There might be something there. Evolution's out, "intelligent design" is in...
Maybe a catchier title? Like "Sex and the Postbiological Cosmos"?
Or:
"The Postbiological Cosmos for Dummies"...
or
"Postbiological Cosmic Soup for the Soul"
"If you're on the bleeding edge, you're holding the knife the wrong way." -- Ancient zenbusiness saying. Obviously, that editor likes to feel blood. I agree with him on that point (I don't know enough about the market to have an opinion on what's "fresh" or not, though).
I know that my personal reading habits have migrated away from AI and nanotech and such. Not that I avoid it at all, but rather that my interests drift over time. I expect that they will drift back to these topics eventually.
If I may jump to conclusions based solely on the title, I'm guessing the book is something like the following excerpt from greg egan's oceanic:
" ... We've always known, as they must have, that the universe is finite in space and time. It's destined to collapse eventually: ‘the stars will fall from the sky.’ But it's easy to imagine ways around that.” He laughed. “We don't know enough physics yet, ourselves, to rule out anything. I've just heard an extraordinary woman from Tia talk about coding our minds into waves that would orbit the shrinking universe so rapidly that we could think an infinite number of thoughts before everything was crushed!” David grinned joyfully at the sheer audacity of this notion. I thought primly: what blasphemous nonsense."
Dyson also has quite an opinion on the subject.
"I know that my personal reading habits have migrated away from AI and nanotech and such."
It's all pretty much "old news" to me, too -- at least conceptually. It's my highly original twist that's so oven-hot fresh! ;- )
chinedum ofoegbu --
You're in the ballpark...
The artist formally known as Chinedum:
Figured as much; postbiological and all ...
In other news (if you'll forgive the momentary hijack) I acquired a blog of my own on this site under the display name "razorsmile" and the url "stayawayfromgravity.blogspot.com". Hopefully, mine will one day be as widely read as yours.
Got any tips for a freshly-minted blogger?
Hmmm. My advice? Have something to say. (I'm not being sarcastic.)
Will do.
Thanks.
Nice communication betwen yourself and agent!
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