It’s been months since I’ve done an audiobook recommendation post. That doesn’t mean I haven’t enjoyed some great listens; it just means I’ve fallen way behind in posting. So this is a round-up post, listing some favorites since last fall.

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore — Audible often has two-for-one sales featuring a limited selection of titles. I take advantage of these, and often find terrific books that I wouldn’t otherwise have known to look for. I think that’s how I discovered this one. It’s an excellent fictionalized story of science, invention, and patents. Edison vs Westinghouse, through the eyes of attorney Paul Cravath.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond — (nonfiction) This one was an eye-opener. The author follows the lives of several individuals over a period of months — both tenants and landlords — using their experiences to examine the forces shaping the structure of home-rental markets in impoverished neighborhoods. It’s an amazing glimpse into the precarious lives of the very poor. This is another title I would not have considered but for the Audible promotion.

A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg — A history of the gene-editing method known as CRISPR, from those who invented it.

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson — Another brilliant look into the future by the incomparable KSR. Red Moon assumes the ascendance of the Chinese in lunar colonization, and explores potential near-future existences on both the Earth and the Moon.

The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen — I loved this book. I majored in biology in college, with a particular interest in evolution, so this book hit home for me. It looks into evolutionary theory, tracing the development of a new theory on the mechanism of evolution, called horizontal gene transfer, in which the movement of genes occurs across species lines. This one partners nicely with Ed Yong’s “I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life” , reviewed last summer. I wish I could find the time to listen to both of them again.

LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking — War has taken new forms and America is not winning. This is a fascinating and eye-opening look at the skilled use of social media as propaganda. If you write near-future #sci-fi or present-day thrillers, read this book.

Ever since Jeffrey Lewis’s novel The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks against the United States came out last summer, people have been recommending it to me.

At last I’ve had a chance to read it, and now I’m recommending it to you.

On Twitter I posted a four-word review: Frightening, excellent, and necessary reading. I’ll add just a bit more here.

Jeffrey Lewis is an academic and the founding publisher of the blog Arms Control Wonk. The 2020 Commission Report is a “speculative novel” written in the form of an official report issued by a commission established to ascertain the historical facts that led to a devastating nuclear attack by North Korea in March of 2020 — just eleven months away in a postulated future.

An official report may sound like dry reading, but it’s riveting. The scenario Lewis develops feels all too realistic, and the characters are the actual people — mostly incompetents — who have somehow, absurdly, been placed in positions of power within the United States.

Here’s hoping we survive until the next election. May we gain enough wisdom as a country to elect competent people into the executive office next time.

Find it at Amazon.

Go here for links to other vendors.

Thank you to everyone who purchased a copy of Edges, or requested a copy from a library. It’s greatly appreciated. There would be little point in continuing to write without people interested in reading my work.

I do have an additional favor to ask — it’s the usual favor…

If you’ve read and enjoyed Edges, please consider posting a reader review — at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, or wherever. It really does help me to sell more copies and selling more copies keeps me in business.

THANK YOU!

Edges is Out Today!

If you pre-ordered the ebook, you should have received it. If you pre-ordered the print version, you should have it soon.

Thank you to everyone who preordered!

If you didn’t preorder, I hope you’ll consider purchasing a copy today.

For those not yet familiar . . . Edges is a new entry point into my classic Nanotech Succession story world.

Here’s a short version of the back-cover description:

Deception Well is a world on the edge, a lone surviving outpost at the farthest reach of human expansion. Now a determined crew resolves to cross the light years to explore the fallen worlds of old and discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins. A far-future space-faring adventure from the award-winning author of VAST. 🙂

A couple of nice reviews came in yesterday. Over at LitStack, Sharon Browning says:

Edges is “a masterful effort, operating both at a slow burn and with a ratcheting intensity that comes to a stunning climax. Linda Nagata has once again given us a future that dances along a razor’s edge—entertaining, thrilling, humbling . . . and hopeful, despite the threat, despite the danger, despite the sacrifice.”

And at Locus, Russell Letson, who is familiar with the earlier Nanotech novels, says:

“In the imaginary coffee-house of my mind, Nagata’s Succession novels are hanging out with thematic and subgeneric cousins by Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks, Greg Bear, Greg Benford, Greg Egan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Robert Reed, discussing the post-human condition, how many nanotechnologies can fit on the head of a pin, the nature and place of sentience in the universe, and whether there is a Long Game in which humankind can play and survive. There’s a portrait of Olaf Stapledon hanging over the mantelpiece, along with a long-barreled raygun. Both are icons of the tradition.”

You do not need to have read the Nanotech Succession novels to enjoy Edges! It’s written as a new on-ramp to the Nanotech story world.

Find Edges online:

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon AU
Amazon DE

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Thank you!

Congratulations to Roland and Stan, who each won a proof copy of Edges!

And thank you to everyone who participated. Your comments are deeply appreciated! I hope you enjoy Edges when it comes out in just over a week. 🙂

Michael Patrick Hicks is a writer of thrillers and horror fiction, and also a reviewer at his own site, High Fever Books. I sent him an advance copy of Edges. He’s posted a very nice write-up, which you can read here.

In the review, he mentions the book came with “the slight warning that this was going to be a far different read than The Red books or her previous release, The Last Good Man.” And that is very true!

Over the years, I’ve explored different segments of genre and different styles of writing. Edges was a deliberate return to the earlier books. As I wrote it, I had in mind those who’d read and enjoyed the Nanotech Succession novels — and of course I am hoping to win new readers too!

But like Vast, Edges is not your usual space opera. I think that has caught some early readers by surprise. But if you like things a little bit different, maybe Edges is for you.

Click here to read the opening chapters. See if you like it.

In the meantime…

Let’s do a giveaway!

I have two proof copies of Edges that never found their way to reviewers. I want to give both away to readers of this blog.

My apologies to my international readers, but I have to limit the giveaways to addresses in the USA because of the astronomical cost of international postage.

If you are in the USA and you’d like to be entered to win a signed proof copy of Edges, say hello in the comments and let me know if you’ve read any of the earlier Nanotech Succession books, or if you’re bravely diving in for the first time to this far-future story world. That’s all you need to do.

If you’re reading this on Goodreads: please come on over to my blog to comment.

I’ll let this run for a week and then ask Google’s random number generator to pick the winners. It’d be nice to get at least ten entries.

Another short post, this time for those who prefer print.

The print edition of Edges is now available for preorder!

Barnes & Noble is offering it at 27%-off the list price today. (I have no idea how long the discount will last).
Find it here.

The print edition is available through Amazon too.

It should also be showing up very shortly in the online catalogs of indie stores such as Powell’s and Tattered Cover. If you shop at an independent store, ask them to bring in a couple of copies!

Publication date is April 2.

This is just a quick post for those who like to get their ebooks from Kobo…

Edges is now available for preorder at Kobo. Find it here. Link goes to the US store, but I think Kobo redirects to the correct regional store if you’re outside of the USA.

In case anyone missed the earlier announcement, here are the links to other vendors:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon AU
Amazon DE

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

I’m expecting proof copies of the print edition to arrive in the next few days. If I don’t have to make any corrections, then print copies will soon be available for preorder too. I’ll let you know.

Publication date is April 2.

I first “met” Vonda N. McIntyre online, circa 2011. She warmly welcomed me into the writers cooperative, Book View Café, which she had helped establish. It was such an honor getting to know this “big name” writer. Vonda’s 1978 novel, Dreamsnake, had won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Pacific Northwest Booksellers award — at a time when successful young women writers of science fiction were far more rare than they are these days. She also won the 1998 Nebula Award with her novel The Moon and the Sun.

Vonda and I were both website geeks and before long we were working together to develop a new online store for Book View Café.

Eventually, I was very pleased to have the opportunity to meet Vonda in person, over a fine lunch at a shoreline restaurant in her native Seattle. I got to see her again at the Spokane Worldcon where she was guest of honor. Over the years, she’s been hugely supportive of me and my work, something I deeply appreciate.

Just this past week, horrible news arrived. Vonda has been diagnosed with inoperable metastatic pancreatic cancer. Grim, though not quite imminent, as she described it. There is time, and there are treatments to prolong the time and, I hope, to provide quality of life.

None of us knows if we will be here tomorrow, but most of us don’t have to face such a stern diagnosis. My heart goes out to Vonda, and it’s my hope that we will have her with us into the future, and that we will see her next novel before too long.

Find Vonda’s novels here at Book View Café, and while you’re there note the minimalism of her posted bio. That’s so Vonda N. McIntyre. 🙂

Asimov’s Reader Award Finalist!

A few months ago, my newest short story “Theories of Flight” appeared in the November/December issue of Asimov’s Magazine. I just learned that this story placed in the top five in the annual Asimov’s reader-award poll. This is the first time a story of mine has received that honor from any magazine. Thank you, to everyone who voted for it! 🙂

Sheila Williams, Asimov’s long-time editor, asked if she could post PDFs of all the top-five stories in each fiction category so they could be easily read for Hugo (and Nebula) consideration. I agreed.

Read it online!
If you didn’t get to read “Theories of Flight” when it first came out, here’s another chance. Click here for the PDF. The story takes place in the world of my novel Memory. If you’ve read that, you’ll want to read this story. And if you read this story, I hope you’ll want to read Memory too.

Finally, if you’re eligible to vote in the Hugos or the Nebulas, I hope you’ll keep “Theories of Flight” in mind as you fill out your ballot. Later on, voting will open up for the Locus awards, and that is open to everyone, so expect another post on my eligible short fiction.