News

October 18-19, 2008, Dublin
OctoCon, The Irish National Science-Fiction Convention. Writer Guest
Royal Dublin Hotel, O'Connell Street
Further information on the convention web site at http://2008.octocon.com/

New Releases

New Releases updated on March 27, 2008

"Escape"
Updated March 27, 2008
Short story focusing on the dreaded Vinge/Kurzweil "Singularity". A convicted killer accepts a deal to be the first guinea-pig for a mind-downloading experiment. The researchers feel this is a reasonable deal for the compensation of a reprieve from Death Row. But the subject has other plans. Included in an anthology entitled Transhuman, compiled by Mark Van Name and Toni Weisskopf. Baen Books, February, 2008.

Moon Flower
Baen Books, April, 2008
Why have two contact missions from Earth to the newly discovered world Cyrene disintegrated, with the bulk of their personnel vanishing, while the few who remain make no sense? The investigator sent to find out finds himself pursuing a political fugitive who has gone there to join a scientist from one of the earlier missions, whom the Terran authorities managing the intended "development" of Cyrene very much want back. The answer involves the difference between living and nonliving things, John Cramer's "Transactional Interpretation" of Quantum Mechanics, and a peculiar alien flower.

Japanese Editions
Anguished Dawn Tokyo Sogensha, August, 2007

The Two Worlds
Reissue of the third and fourth "Giants" novels (Giants' Star and Entoverse) packaged in one volume as a companion set to The Two Moons. Baen Books paperback, September, 2007.

Jailhouse Rock
Early "Knight" military caper. Audio adaptation in two parts released by Variant Frequency, October, 2007. -- Part 1 -- Part 2

Echoes of an Alien Sky
Updated January 19, 2007
Inhabitants from a future cooled, life-supporting Venus exploring the ruins of the extinct civilization that once existed on Earth. The strange thing is that as the Venusian scientists piece together more of Terran biology, the more it seems that the two families of life are too closely related to be coincidental. Some conclude that the Terrans must be their ancestors. But how could that be, when it is shown conclusively that the time scales cannot be made to match, even remotely? Baen Books hardcover, February, 2007.

The Proteus Operation
Added November 11, 2006
Spanish edition released by Libros del Atril, Barcelona, October, 2006.

Mission to Minerva
Updated October 31, 2006
Fifth novel in the Giants series, Baen Books Hardback, May, 2005, 408 pp., ISBN 7434-9902-6, $26.00 US, $37.50 Canadian.

U.S. Paperback, Baen Books, October, 2006, 569 pp., ISBN 1-4165-2090-2, $7.99 US, $9.99 Canadian.

Vic Hunt and Chris Danchekker head a small Terran group in a joint project with Thurien scientists to unravel the mysterious physics of the Multiverse. This enables a mission to be sent back to the planet Minerva 50,000 years in the past, before the time of its destruction, in an attempt to create a new reality unfolding toward an altered history.

"Murphy's War"
Updated October 16, 2007
Short story featured in the online magazine Jim Baen's Universe, August 2007 issue. The world's illustrious leaders have a bad day and try to start the Big One. But nothing gets launched when nobody can get the computers to work.

Pending:

Pending updated on July 8, 2008

Inherit the Stars, Korean edition
Added July 8, 2008
Woongjin Think Big Co. Ltd., Seoul. Further details and release date to follow.

Japanese Editions
Added September 16, 2007
The following releases have been scheduled by Tokyo Sogensha

Kicking the Sacred Cow Spring, 2008
Martian Knightlife Summer, 2008
Mind Matters Fall, 2007
Mission to Minerva, end 2008
The Legend That Was Earth, release date TBA

Voyage from Yesteryear in Spain
Added November 1, 2006
Agreement concluded for a Spanish language edition with Roca Editorial de Libros in Barcelona. Details to follow.

"Giants" Series Movie & TV Option
Updated December 19, 2007
Many readers have inquired over the years about the possibility of a movie adaptation for Inherit the Stars and the "Giants" series in general. We've now concluded a deal with MGM for movie and TV series rights for the full set. This doesn't guarantee that the option will be taken up and implemented--but you've got to start somewhere. Option renewed December 2007.

Current Projects

Current Projects updated on May 16, 2008

New Novel in Progress
Added May 16, 2008

The Migration. Baen Books Hardback, release date TBA.

We're at an indeterminate time in the future. The world of the past eventually died in the conflagration toward which it had been doggedly heading. A more fragmented and diversified order has emerged from the ruins. While some recognizable remnants of cultures remain, the former nations and global institutions with their pressures toward conformity have gone. A new world is emerging as a patchwork of isolated social orders in which technology has reappeared to a greater or lesser degree in some places and not at all in others.

Unique among them is the nation-state of Sofi, with an exceptional population that has rediscovered advanced science, but unlike developed world of the previous era, keeps its knowledge within its own borders, to be taught to those who are judged worthy. However, as the old patterns that led to ruin before begin to reassert themselves across the rest of the world, a scientific-political movement within Sofi embarks on a years-long project to build a generation ship that will enable them to create their own world elsewhere.

The planners manage to restrain themslves from the seemingly all-but-universal human impulse--if given the chance--to design and impose their own imagined utopia as the way everyone else ought to live. The circumstances and thinking of future generations growing up in the totally unknown situation of a space environment cannot be known. Accordingly, the mission from the outset is conceived around the notion of, and carries the material resources to enable, different groups of idealists, reformers, misfits, and dissidents who are not satisfied with the physical form and method of government represented by the world-in-miniature that constitutes the original mother ship, to go out and build whatever they want. Hence, what arrives at the distant star generations hence will be a flotilla of variously run city states, frontier towns, religious monasteries, pleasure resorts, urban crushes, rural spreads, academic retreats, and who-knows what else.

The trouble begins, of course, when all the old patterns that they thought they were getting away from start appearing there too.

Farm Project Update
Updated May 16, 2008

The floors are in, bathroom fittings and tiling completed, interior painting done, and construction of closets and fitted wardrobes more than halfway there. An important aspect of this kind of work is to delay the breaking-through from the extension into the main house for as long as possible, so that the maximum amount of work to be done takes place on the other side of the wall. Construction people being the way they are, once that wall comes down, you're living with them in your house. We expect to be at that point very soon now--in fact, as soon as the fellow who'll be doing the job returns from celebrating the addition of a new grandchild to his family. Such celebrations being the way they are, and in view of the current balmy weather, I'd give it a couple of weeks.

People comment that this has been dragging on for some time now. That's true. I did get a quote early on for the whole job to be managed by a contractor down in the village, who does this kind of thing all the time and would have had a crew in who'd have had it wrapped up probably in a couple of months. But the figure he gave me was almost as much as I paid for the house on its acre of hillside, so I decided to hire my own people and tackle it a bit at a time--and hopefully,that way you learn a useful thing or two yourself in the process. And then there's what Harry Harrison used to call the "Paddy Factor" in getting anything done here. An example in the present case was the business with the doors. The fellow who put the floors in didn't measure the height of the doorways until after the boards were laid, at which point he realized that the doors were too long, and they couldn't be changed for any standard sizes that would fit. So he had to cut strips off the bottoms, which was fine. . . . Until the carpets were fitted, at which point he realized he hadn't allowed for them, so the doors will have to be shortened again.

But it's not as if I haven't been through this before, so I really don't have ground to complain. The trouble is that we "artistes" never seem able to see the reality in front of our eyes because we're blinded by visions of what "could be." And despite the repeated resolutions after every such experience that this is definitely the last time, never again, somehow the memories fade. Yes, as we're told, indeed we live, and we learn . . . and then we forget. Many women that I know tell me it's much the same with having babies.

Nonfiction book on Electric Universe theory
Added June 26, 2007

The organizers of an international conference that I attended recently in Las Vegas invited me there to encourage me to write a popular-level treatment of the subject, somewhat in the style of Kicking the Sacred Cow. As coincidence would have it, I had for several months been harboring a growing inclination to produce just such a book as a result of my growing fascination with the concepts involved, the more I learned about them. My agent, Eleanor Wood, is enthusiastic and think it would be a great idea. So I expect to be devoting time to preparing a book proposal along such lines during the months ahead.