Storytellersunplugged

 

“In the late 21st century, when something alien is discovered beyond the edge of the solar system, the spaceship Theseus sets out to make contact. Led by an enigmatic AI and a genetically engineered vampire, the crew includes a biologist who’s more machine than human, a linguist with surgically induced multiple personality disorder, a professional soldier who’s a pacifist, and Siri Keeton, a man with only half a brain.”

 

 

My Christmas gift to all of you.

 

I discovered author Peter Watts a few years ago and couldn’t get enough. He writes hard science fiction with an emphasis on the science side of things. Which makes sense, since I understand he is in fact a scientist himself, with advanced degrees in obscure subjects (at least to me) like the ecophysiology of marine mammals.

 

I’ve enjoyed all of Peter’s books to date – STARFISH, MAELSTROM, BEHEMOTH: B-MAX, BEHEMOTH: SEPPUKU – and I’m not alone in my praise. From the New York Times Notable Book of the Year nod for his debut novel to the Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist starred reviews for his latter works, people in the know seem to think Peter’s got the goods.

 

Peter’s had some unusual circumstances impact his career. The conclusion of his Rifters trilogy was deemed too long for publication as a single work by its publisher, Tor, and so it was split in two, becoming the aforementioned BEHEMOTH: B-MAX and BEHEMOTH: SEPPUKU respectively. The strange part was that neither book mentioned that they were two parts of a whole, forcing Peter to find a way to let the reader know that in an author’s note inside the book (which didn’t help me much when I purchased the second one thinking it was the first, but I digress.)

And despite all the good press and general response to his previous works, his latest book seems to have been handed a death sentence before it even hit the streets. The initial print run was rather low, something in the order of 3,700 copies, neither Barnes & Noble or Borders pre-ordered it to be stocked in their brick and mortar stores and, to make matters worse, it isn’t easily available in any of the major independents either.

The first two months after release make or break a book. Any of the above problems could have drastically limited the success of BLINDSIGHT – having to deal with all three at once is the kind of thing that would make me want to curl up in a corner and weep. If people can’t find the book, they can’t buy it and read it. If they don’t buy it, it reflects as a black mark on the writer’s career, as unfortunately, in the eyes of the publisher, you are often only as good as your last book.

 

So in what he calls more an “act of desperation than experimentation” Peter has gone ahead and made the complete text of BLINDSIGHT available online under a Creative Commons license. You can find it here and I urge you to give it a try. If you find you like it, support Peter, and specifically this book, by buying yourself a copy from one of the online vendors like Amazon.

 

Other authors have done this in the past – I’m thinking specifically of Cory Doctorow’s DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM, Kelly Link’s STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN, or more recently, Charlie Stross’ ACCELERANDO. There isn’t any real data to show whether doing something like this boosts sales of the actual book or not, unfortunately. The same can be said of my own experiment in podcasting the entire text of my novel HERETIC. While I’ve had over 35,000 unique individuals download one or more episodes, I don’t know how many of those downloads actually translated to book sales. Which is a bummer, but knowing that ahead of time didn’t stop me from doing it and neither did it stop Peter.

 

I’d like to see this “experiment” have a beneficial impact on Peter’s career. Hence my posting about it today, despite the fact that I had another completely different essay on characterization already written. This seemed timelier and has the added benefit of possibly helping a writer I don’t know but greatly admire. Either way, I thought our readers here at Storytellersunplugged would find it interesting.

I do know one thing is certain – if you like hard science fiction, you’ll like Peter’s work.

 

 

Happy holidays to all!

Joe Nassise

 

(PS - For those interested, Peter’s earlier books, STARFISH and MAELSTROM, are also available under the same CC license at his website – www.rifters.com)

 

 

(PPS -One final note - Peter has put the text of the book online with complete permission of his publisher. I’ve seen some speculation about the issue, so I thought I’d set the record straight right from the start.)

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If you liked this post, visit Joe's XtremeLife blog for more of the same. If you're interested in working with him as either a writing or life coach, check out XtremeLife Coaching. Joe's fiction can be found at his official website, JosephNassise.com
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