The Human Division Hardcover Extras: Now Available Electronically (and Free!)
Posted on May 28, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 26 Comments
We told you this time would come, and so it has: The two extra stories in the hardcover/compiled eBook edition of The Human Division, “After the Coup” and “Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today,” are now available to you for free, via Tor.com, which has all the details for download here. There is one catch, which is that you need to have a Tor.com account to download the extras, but getting one is both easy and free, and anyway Tor.com is awesome and you want to be part of that scene, trust me.
The release of these stories will catch up everyone who bought the serialized electronic version of The Human Division; now everyone in every format has everything.
That said, you don’t have to own The Human Division to get these stories; you just need to have a Tor.com account. However, be aware that “Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro” has a spoiler for the book. I’m just warning you in advance.
In any event: Enjoy, and welcome to Tuesday.
Write only what you’ve tasted?
Thank you, Mr John! And a green spring to you and family.
Any possibility of this making it to Audible sometime soon, John?
I know you’re out on book tour promoting Human Division, but having read it over the weekend (I waited for the full version on ebook so I’d only have the one file — but I did pre-order that) I now must demand that you return to Ohio and get writing on the sequel! Now, gosh darn it! *cracks whip*
Seriously though, a great read but _so_ many moving parts still unsettled at the end… hence my urgency for the next installment.
Much luck/fun on the promo tour!
Excellent. I wasn’t one of those upset about missing these (I already had “After the Coup”, and figured we’d get the other story eventually), but I’m glad to see them available so soon.
As a long-time Tor.com member I’d read After the Coup back when it came out. I loved the Sorvalh story; as a Washingtonian myself it’s sometimes hard to think of everyone as more or less working towards the same general positive goals, albiet with different ideas of what makes for the best way there. But what a lovely little interchange with Sorvalh and the little girl, and a reminder that the entire field of diplomacy exists with the goal of everyone getting to a solution without needing to take a punch.
Was Tony inspired by any particular example of what seem like the endless series of stories of folks leaving high-powered jobs to go into food? Warren Brown of Cakelove is sort of the local prototype for that but clearly the DC of the future has changed if people there are entering the food stand business after leaving finance rather than law.
I do quibble with characterizing it as the Lincoln Monument rather than Memorial but I’ll give Sorvalh a pass, being an alien and all.
Thanks John! Can’t wait to read new stuff you’ve written (as always).
Thanks, John and Tor!
There was a hiccough when I first tried to download the ebook. When I followed Tor’s link to the download, and then tried to log into Tor from that page, I got a page that just said, “Invalid token,” on both my phone and on my computer. I got around it by going to Tor’s home page and logging in there, then following the link to the downloads.
I enjoyed your reading in Seattle. Is there any chance of a recorded reading of “Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today” becoming available? Your recording of “After the Coup” was how I first experienced that story, and I think it would be great to have both in that format.
I read the serialized version, so it’s nice to have the “extra” story now. I’d read “After the Coup” when it was first available on Tor.com, but enjoyed re-reading it after reading The Human Division. It’s a good story.
I greatly enjoyed the Sorvalh story, too. I’d read a whole novel about her and her diplomatic missions. No rush on that, though. I still don’t have a very good idea of what she looks like, though. Before reading this story, I didn’t think of her as being even remotely “lizard-y” (though maybe I wasn’t reading close enough). Now I think of her as a big gangly lizard whose smile is scary (maybe filled with teeth?). “That was a smile.” “I don’t think so.” is maybe the best exchange between two characters in a Scalzi story EVER. I’d love to see an illustrated “bestiary” of all the OMW aliens. Thanks!
I just finished and I really liked it. Captured everything I loved about the previous “Old Man’s War” books (this series needs a better overarching title), while still being fresh and new. I would have put “Before the Coup” at the front of the ebook, since it happens first and gets referenced a lot, but glad to have it (I had previously read it from the website, so I was not confused). Plenty of action, suspense, and surprises, with good characters.
The only thing I didn’t like is that unlike all the other books, it is not self contained. The Ghost Brigades, even though it was in the middle and led from Old Man’s war and into The Last Colony was still completely contained; you could read it in isolation and it still worked. This one let’s off in the middle. The best series are those where the individual volumes are contained within themselves while still being part of a whole, like the previous semi-quadrilogy. I’m glad they gave you a second season, because if the series ended here we would all have to hunt you down for the real ending.
Also please work out a way to trade in for a compiled ebook next time. I didn’t buy the episodes because I didn’t want to deal with 13 individual files forevermore; If I could trade them for the compiled ebook at the end I would have been reading along instead of waiting.
Though its nice to get stuff for free, can someone in the publishing business explain the busy model? I am a bit confused. This question is going to probably sound stupid to someone who works in the publishing business.
So John sells a series of short stores for about $1 each that come out monthly.
Then 2-3 months after that run is done he releases a regular hardcover of these with 2 additional stories. I get this part.
Then gives the ebook version with the 2 extra copies away for free just a few weeks after releasing the hardcover?
Was this done to generate more publicity and get more fans hooked for the 2nd season? Have other authors done stuff like this?
Not trolling. The more author blogs I read, the more curious I get about the business and marketing side of publishing.
fyi. I picked up the hardcover version. I have not read it yet. I don’t like ebooks. Not my thing. I am not complaining about the ebook being free.
RE; HS Eats a Churro… So John, what’s the running tally on people asking poop related questions at your readings?
Guess:
I’m not clear from your post what you’re picturing. The extras are free and in ebook format, not the whole book. “After the Coup” was available already, so the only new piece was the Hafte Sorvalh short story.
After getting 11 straight “Oops! There was an error with your form data:” errors I gave up trying to register on the Tor site. Sorry, John, but it’s a cluster over there.
Hm. And there’s no apparent way to tell Tor that.
Thanks! As one who bought the serialized version as it came out, I appreciate the prompt, uncomplicated release of the extras. Both are fun, and add extra texture to the 1st season of HD. You & Tor have done well by doing good here.
Thanks for getting the story up so soon, also. And I *clearly* need to locate and consume a churro.
I’ve read “After the Coup” before and enjoyed it. The Hafte Sorvalh story is a very sweet and hopeful way to leave this set of stories and I’m really getting to like Hafte a lot. Please return to this universe soon Mr. Scalzi. I want to know what happens!
A Different Daniel: No idea on the running tally, but it was the first question at the reading I was at in Mountain View.
Yay! Thanks!
Finished the Hard Back last night and I really enjoyed it very much, I had been skimming things about what was in at at my highest level and for some reason I had the impression it was set before the Old Man War book, very glad I was wrong, it’s a great read, thank you
Thanks. I love Hafte Sorvalh!
Folks, I wasn’t able to log in OR get Tor to send me a new password (it’s been awhile) until I e-mailed the webmaster, who fixed it very quickly. Just so’s you know, that does work if you can’t log in.
Hafte’s story is very sweet.
And cheers to Tor for putting these online for free so I could get the entire story! Kudos to you!
“anyway Tor.com is awesome”
Except that they’re spamming me, and when that made me annoyed enough that I wanted to delete my account, it turns out that there’s no way to do that. That’s actually quite unawesome.
(…and by default they “share your personal information with unrelated third parties for their own marketing use” and the only way to stop that is to send your name and all your e-mail addresses via email to their internet marketing department. Good for them that they’re not where I am because that kind of shitty behaviour is illegal here…)
Just finished the hardcover version of the Human Division courtesy of my local public library. Enjoyed re-entering the Old Man’s War universe. One item that jarred was that the lips were blue and this color supposedly initially brought carbon monoxide poisoning to the investigators’ minds. If they knew about carbon monoxide poisoning, they would have also known about cherry red lips as its telltale sign and never brought it into the discussion as a potential cause of death.
Carbon monoxide binds to the heme moity within the blood cell at the same 4 sites as oxygen does, similarly turning the blood from blue to red. Unlike oxygen, this binding of CO is much stronger, preventing release of the CO molecules back into the blood, permanently disabling the oxygen carrying capacity of the affected blood cells. So, death due to lack of oxygen coupled with the lips presenting as cherry red, not blue, is a hallmark of carbon monoxide poisoning.
As was later proposed in the book, a person who dies from anoxia will have blue lips since their hemoglobin lacks oxygen molecules, either from excess in the environment or impaired exchange capacity in the lungs, will present with blue lips and a bluish cast to the skin, as was finally deduced by the story’s investigators.