Speaking of books, these are the books I was given or bought while I was in Scotland and/or were waiting for me when I returned. From the left:

Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction — this book was pressed upon me by a bunch of cheerfully tipsy Scots at the Orbit party at Interaction, whose number included its editor. So, there: parties are good for something. The book includes short stories written by Scottish SF/F writers (or, in a couple of cases, SF/F writers who are not Scottish by birth but spend a significant amount of time in country), who include brand-spankin’ new Hugo winner Charles Stross, Ken MacLeod, Jane Yolen and Michael Cobley (the latter of whom sat on one of my panels at Interaction).

Aside from the contents, of which I have only begun to explore but which I so far find to be rather good, the book wins my early affection for two bibliographically geeky reasons: One, the cover design is very clean and cool looking, and two, the book is typeset in Goudy, which is my all time favorite font. I know, I’m a dork. I’m not entirely sure the book will be made available in the US, so I feel quite happy to have nicked a copy; if you are in the UK, however, you can snag a copy off of Amazon.co.uk.

Magic Lessons, by Justine Larbalestier — I’m not proud; I begged this advance reader’s copy off of Ms. Larbalestier in a groveling sort of fashion because I knew that aside from my own anticipation for the book (based on the excellent Magic or Madness, the first book in the series, which is one of the best YA books of this year), bringing this book home for my wife to read would garner me a whole bunch of spousal credits, redeemable for fabulous prizes and avoidance of some chores. Krissy’s response to me giving her this book was instructive. She took it, looked at it and said “I’ll read it right now, but you know when this comes out I’m going to get my own copy.” Krissy gets the idea that the best way you can compliment an author for the work is to actually buy the book. Go, wife, go! But she’ll have to wait until next March to get it from the bookstore.

As for myself, I’m saving this one for after I finish The Ghost Brigades — i.e., as a reward. See? This is how we writers motivate ourselves. I’ll let you know how it is, although I can tell you right now I expect it to be very good indeed. Also, dig the very cool-looking cover (there’s a better version here).

The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks — This one was a Hugo nominee this year but it’s not currently available in the US (it’ll be released later in the year by Night Shade Books), so I picked it up and then read it while I was flying back from Scotland, and also as I was stranded at Philadelphia’s airport for ten hours. While casting no aspersions on Night Shade, who I expect will benefit quite nicely from publishing the book, it’s more than mildly appalling this book was not snapped up by a major Stateside publisher.

Now, I vaguely recall reading a Salon article with Banks in which he suggested he didn’t want the hassle of dealing with a major publisher here in the US, so maybe that has something to do with it as well. But jeez, people. This is a good book, and a commercially viable one as well: Fine literary competence, fun speculation (particularly regarding the Dwellers, gas-planet creatures who live to be billions of years old and yet on the surface appear to be a bunch of flighty twits), and a fine story line, albeit one that wraps up a little raggedly at the end. Well, what can you say. Endings are hard. And the ride to it at the very least was an excellent one.

If the book is being released in the US by a small publisher because that Banks’ choice, more power to him and to Night Shade. But if it’s being released by Night Shade because the major SF publishers didn’t see the book as worth their time, well, that’s bad. I hope it makes a ton for Night Shade and for Banks. That’ll teach ‘em. The folks at Amazon suggest this will be released in the US in about a month; start saving your pennies now.

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philip K. Dick, by Emmanuel Carrere — Certain publishing entities have determined I have a large enough presence online to start sending me books in an unsolicited fashion; this is one that was waiting for me when I got back. Naturally, I encourage all book publishers to do the same. Baby needs books. As it happens, I had done some of my own research into the life of PKD for my upcoming science fiction film book, which led me to the conclusion that the man was quite far off his nut more often than not, and a quick glance into this book seems to bolster this conclusion as well.

It’s paying off for him now, seeing how he’s one of the hottest writers in Hollywood, which makes it a shame that he’s been dead since just before Blade Runner came out in 1982. I’ve heard Dick called the “Shakespeare of SF,” but it’s probably more accurate to say he’s like the genre’s Van Gogh: Better appreciated dead. Interestingly, this book, while released in hardcover here in the US just last year, looks to have been originally published in French in 1993; more proof, perhaps, that even as a biographical subject PKD has way ahead of his time. I’ll be delving further into this book at some point, but for now I want to hold off mulling on how sad and tweaked the man’s life was. I have a book of my own to write.

As an aside, some of you know that the title of one of my upcoming books is The Android’s Dream, which is a blatant riff/steal off of the title of one of PKD’s most famous books, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which in case you didn’t know was the source material for Blade Runner. I would like to state here and now that the only thing that my book and PKD’s writing have in common are those three words; I can’t even imagine trying to get into the headspace that would cause me to write as Dick did. This may be to my detriment as an artist, but on the other hand my day-to-day life seems nicer. It’s a fair trade.

And there you have it.

Krissy was sending out copies of Agent to the Stars to family and friends when she noticed one of the books had an interesting production error: The hardback cover was upside down, relative to the pages inside. I tried to get a picture of it, but it’s difficult to get both the spine of a book and the inside of a book in the same picture, so purely for archival purposes, I made a quick little movie instead. Don’t feel as if you need to watch it. Personally, I think it’s cool to have this kind of production error, since it doesn’t affect the book in any practical way (i.e., the book is still entirely readable), and since it already makes what was a collector’s item even more collectible. The vast majority of the author copies I have are printed correct, but who’s to say there’s not a couple more like this? Check your book, you may have a winner.

Also, today is the first day that I’ve seen the Amazon ranking of Agent to the Stars get higher than the Amazon ranking of Old Man’s War; OMW was at 25k while A2S was at 22k (this is also, incidentally, the lowest OMW ranking I’ve seen in a while). I like the idea of the two books passing in the night, as it were, although in the long run A2S is going to dip below OMW no matter what, since there’s a limited supply of A2S copies, and once they’re gone, that’s pretty much it. Subterranean Press tells me we’re at the final third of the print run (i.e., only about 500 copies left), so I’m happy they’re moving at a brisk clip.

I did want to say something about Agent to the Stars that I hadn’t mentioned before, which was that due to an error, the book’s dedication page was not printed. So for the record, the book is dedicated to two very good friends of mine: Natasha Kordus (whose last name I use for an important character in the book) and Stephen Bennett.

Natasha has been one of my closest and dearest friends since my freshman year in high school, and in addition to being a great friend, Stephen was also one of the first two people to read Agent to the Stars when I had finished writing it (the other being Regan Avery, to whom Old Man’s War is co-dedicated). I’m very pleased to dedicate the book to these two people, and beg their forgiveness regarding the error that kept the dedication out of the actual book. Ironically, given its small print run, more people will see the book dedication here than would likely read it in the book itself. So that’s not too bad.

Going back briefly to Old Man’s War, there’s a nice review of it on Revolution SF. I’m pleased reviewers are still picking up the book and commenting on it this far into its lifecycle; as an author, you like to see your book being part of the literary conversation.

In short: This book thing is fun. I recommend it to everyone.

Lord knows it’s wrong of me, but I’m always just a little bit delighted when entire states sabotage the educations of their children for no particularly good reason. As you know I have a child of my own, and by the time she gets to college age competition for the good schools will be fierce. Anything that knocks out hundreds of thousands of potential competitors in one fell swoop is a cause for celebration.

Yes, I’m sad that in the long run it means we’ll just have several hundred thousand additionally poorly educated adults puttering about. But as I’m fond of noting, ignorant is not the same as stupid, and one can hope these folks can be made aware of the causes of their ignorance. After all, it seems possible that not every one of those hundreds of thousands of poorly educated adults will be pleased at the people who put them at a competitive disadvantage to my daughter (and other children whose parents are skeptical that a loving God, should he, she or it exist, would prefer followers to possess a lemur-like level of knowledge), and will respond accordingly. One may hope.

In the meantime, my kid will be kicking their academic asses up and down the road. It’s an unfair advantage she has (but not too unfair, as Ohio is one the dumbass states that ignorantly confuses religious agendae for science, so we’ll have to work with that), but I’m certainly not going to penalize my own daughter because other people seem content to enforce ignorance on other children. I’ll just point it out to her as it happens and remind her that one of the worst things she can do to herself is let other people make her ignorant because they can’t handle not being ignorant themselves. I point it out to her already.

So go, Kansas, go! You know, the heliocentric theory of solar system physics is lookin’ kind of shaky. Go after that next. That’ll up Athena’s Ivy chances for sure. “Hey, here’s a kid from the Midwest who is not as credulous as a pig,” the admissions officers will say, and then reach for the thick packet. God bless them for it. And God bless Kansas, too.