Ex Urbe

Hello, friends & readers.  This is a quick update to share links to a couple short essays I’ve written for other blogs.

My first science fiction novel Too Like the Lightning comes out very soon now, May 10th!  Initial reviews and reactions have been extremely enthusiastic, and these days Twitter sometimes feels like a surreal dream, with authors I’ve admired deeply for years gushing over… me?  (Karl Schroeder: “most exciting SF future I’ve encountered in years.” Ken Liu: “reflective, analytical, smart, beautiful.” Max Gladstone: “I’m kind of in love with this book.” Fran Wilde: “Too Like the Lightning = AMAZEBALLS! GET! READ!”)

In honor of the occasion (and to help pre-orders & first week sales which can do so much for a new author!) I’ve been asked to write a bunch of short guest blog pieces which I hope you’ll enjoy.  You can also read the first four chapters up on Tor.com.

On SF Signal I have talked “Middle Future Science Fiction” i.e.  SF set later than near future but while the majority of human culture is still on Earth, and why I think this is an exciting and new space for speculative fiction. Take-home quote: “We have many ways to talk about the End of History, so many that talking about the Future of History is now the novelty.”

On the Tor/Forge publisher blog meanwhile I have a piece on “World Building like a Historian” about how my historical training helps me build a future which is rooted, not only in the present, but in the past.  Take-home quote: “All humanity’s presents have been full of the past, for as long as there has been a historical record. So if there’s one safe bet we can make about the future, it’s that it will be full of the past too.”

Ten or so more guest blog pieces will be going up over the next weeks, many of which I’m very proud of, and I’ll gather and post links here. Meanwhile reviews on Barnes & Noble, Fantasy Literature and Romantic Times (<=best ever plot summary!) do a much better job describing the book than I can manage.

Here on Ex Urbe, with readers who know me well through my essays and travels, I can describe it a different way.  I’ve poured myself into this book. This is the real thing, the centerpiece.  You’ve seen my essays here.  You’ve seen my love of craftsmanship, and rhetoric, of playful structures and framing twists, describing a stick in water as the “antagonist” or suddenly letting Descartes stray into a dialog with Socrates.  You’ve also seen the depth of my empathy, my Machiavelli series which so many readers have written in to say moved them to tears, and moved me to tears too as I wrote it.  I love essay writing, and history writing, but every bit of skill I have at it, every hour I’ve put in, I’ve put in for the novels.  “Writing is a long apprenticeship.”  That was the best and most important piece of advice I got from my favorite writing professor when I started college.  He was right, and I took him seriously, wrote every morning for two hours before breakfast, did extra drafts beyond what class required, spent my summers and my breaks taking more writing classes.  Hours and hours and hours.  I love writing nonfiction, and I love writing essays, but it was these stories, the ones I wanted to tell in the novels which kept the fire burning through a long, long apprenticeship.  Too Like the Lightning isn’t an easy book and it’s not for everyone.  It takes a lot of concentration, reading with your brain at your best.   It takes skill at reading genre fiction, at picking out the puzzle pieces of world building and piecing them together, which can be difficult if you aren’t used to reading in the genre.  It takes patience as you watch very complicated things play out as fast as I could make them when you need to know so much to understand.  It takes trust as the narrator and narrative take twists or show idiosyncrasies whose true purpose may not be clear until the end (or until the next book, which comes in December).  I hate spoilers, and hate recommendations that give half the story away, and believe strongly that the very best recommendation is simply “You’ll like it, trust me” from a friend who knows me very well.  So I’m not going to talk about the plot and themes and characters, since Romantic Times does that much that better than I can.  I will just say that this book may be for you, if you like philosophy, and history, and challenging books that really stretch your mind, and new ideas about society and culture, and my essays here are a good sample.  But you have to enjoy and be able to handle challenging world building.  And above all you have to be willing to trust me, the author, that all the threads will come together, and that in the end the tapestry will be beautiful, the kind of tapestry I can only weave if you give me four books, 700,000 words, a lot more time and trust than I have with my essays here. I will absolutely keep writing essays for Ex Urbe (no worries there!), but if you have enjoyed them, then you may enjoy the real work they were practice for.  It comes out in five days; hard to believe it’s real.

Meanwhile, the primary reason it’s been so very long since I wrote a proper Ex Urbe entry is simple: a fire at the end of February drove me from my home. Happily no family members (or books!) were harmed, but the complications of temporary quarters, construction and insurance have eaten the few hours research that already consumed by research and preparing for the book launch.  I’m still struggling my way out from under the to-do mountain that has caused, but as I make my way out Ex Urbe is starting to get toward the top of the pile again, and I’m really, deeply looking forward to finishing the essay I did manage to start in February before fire became more than a metaphor.  Meanwhile I’ll post here when new guest blog pieces go up.  And I’ll try to write another little piece next week to share my feelings when the day comes.  May 10th.  Five days.  So many, many years… five days!

Too Like the Lightning is available through Powell’s, Barnes & Noble (also on nook), Amazon, Kobo, Indiebound, Goodreads, and your own wonderful local bookstore which is always great to support!

Meanwhile, for general human edification, here are some photos of fascinating plants with cards explaining their interesting historic uses, which I got to see at the botanical gardens in Sydney Australia, where I was for a conference last month.  (Did I mention I’ve been overwhelmingly busy?)