“The Life of the Mind” Excerpt at Tor.com
Posted on June 2, 2015 Posted by John Scalzi 29 Comments
Starting next Tuesday, June 9, Tor is releasing electronically the four novellas that comprise The End of All Things, once a week through June. The first of these is “The Life of The Mind,” and to get you excited about what’s to come, Tor.com has an excerpt from the story up on the site. Go on, you know you want to peek!
You may also, you know, pre-order “The Life of the Mind” as well as the other three novellas, at your favorite ebook retailer. Prefer to wait for the entire book, which comes out August 11? You may pre-order that too, online or at your favorite local bookseller. Want that book signed? Subterranean Press is taking pre-orders and if you order through them the book will be scribbled upon by me. And yes, there will be an audiobook version as well. We’re all about options, here.
Expect me to be talking more about the novellas (and the novel!) all this month. I’m super excited to share it all with you.
Audible is not serializing this book, correct? (I have all of your other books from Audible)
Are you doing a book tour for The End of All Things?
Yonatan:
The audiobook will not be serialized this time.
Beth:
Yes!
Approximately how long is each of the four novellas (page count)?
I just sent you $3.00, John. I know you can use it. Try not to spend it all in one place.
Michael:
They range between 17.5k and 33k words and average 25k words. I don’t know what that will turn out to be in terms of pages on your eReader. That’s dependent on your own settings.
Jerome:
I EAT TONIGHT
Excellent news about Audible. Any news on when pre-orders will be available on Audible? (Oh, and congratulations)
That should have read pre-orders will be available for the audio version.
Greg:
No idea.
I’m a binge reader. I am finding it very hard to follow the latest Retrieval Artist novels, and they are coming out one per month. I am not really enjoying the experience, but I want to know how it ends.
I think I will stick with my whole eBook pre-order of TEOAT. Delayed gratifications but less confusion.
I have my order in at Sub Press.
Will the full novel have all the individual artwork in it?
Very frustratingly, I cannot pre-order either the completed book (my preferred choice), OR the individual novella as the Amazon Kindle store has elected in it’s own infinite wisdom to NOT make it available in my part of the world (New Zealand).
I fully understand this is a “publisher” issue, and not an “author” issue; but I’m hoping that a comment here may lead to a comment in the ear of someone in the publishing side of things who can actually get something done about it.
I’ve had no issues in pre-ordering or purchasing your previous few works on the Kindle (Lock In, Unlocked, The Human Division), so I’m (probably understandably) miffed that this one isn’t available.
I’d love to push my money in your direction if I could, honest!
So where do I go to get my eBook signed?
Is this a new record from delivery of a ms to print for Tor? It seems really damn quick…
The entire world revolves around that burger joint.
I swear, if you blow it up, I will taunt you with Ketchup.
John:
The last book came out in paper with extra bits that weren’t in the serialized part. (Boo.) Will this be true of this one as well, or are the words the same in novellas, ebook, and paper?
Answer carefully — as much as 11 cents may be riding on this.
The e books don’t seem to be available in the UK either. Th I am surprised as these were available for The Human Division.
Lurkertype:
The paper version will have an extra bit that will also be made freely available electronically. Whether that’ll be at the end of Novella Four or as a separate bit I’m not sure yet. But regardless, everything in the printed book will be available to everyone who buys the novellas.
Not the Reddit Chris S.:
They moved quickly because I turned in the manuscript late.
Next step: Signed audiobook editions, with a preamble of your recorded voice saying “Hi, fancycwabs, this is John Scalzi. Enjoy the book, as read by Wil Wheaton!”
Because having thousands of different versions of the book won’t cost Audible of ton of bandwidth at all.
On turning in late – oops. I hope you sent cookies to the Tor team?
I know it’s supposed to be colloquial, but “hadn’t of”? Kinda jumps out at you…
@scalzi: Good. I still haven’t gotten the extra bits from the previous book; are those available?
@tpoiii: Me too. I don’t know how I managed to keep things straight when there was a year between Retrieval Artist books! Even a month between them is taxing my ability, although to be fair, these last several are much more interconnected instead of stand-alone. Almost done, though.
when will this book be available for me to purchase?
Now available in the UK Kindle store. Thanks :)
Does anyone know why it’s not available to Australia on Kindle? Neither in the US store nor in the (price-gouging) Australian one.
Ah, never mind. Found the comment on Tor.com about Macmillan Australia holding up release until January. Because that’s likely to work…
So what you’re telling us is, you’ll show us the life of the mind?
Just finished rereading THD and bought this this morning. I’ll be getting to it at lunchtime, hopefully. Just saw the first sentence so far. Did you have any “IIIIIIII’m the Man in the Box” earworming happen while writing this one?