Podcast announcement & grab bag

Science Fiction WorldCon grandmaster Ken MacLeod on tap, & much more

Coming soon: ‘The Desired Effect’ — my new podcast featuring Ken MacLeod, Cory Doctorow and lots more

Someday real soon now — tomorrow (Saturday, August 10, 2024), I hope — if you subscribe to Sundman figures it out! you’ll be getting an email from me about The Desired Effect, my new podcast about science, science fiction, literature and technology. I’ll send you an email as soon as the podcast is live.

The inaugural episode of The Desired Effect¹ features a long conversation I had just this last Monday with science fiction grandmaster and WorldCon² Guest of Honor Ken MacLeod.

Over nearly two hours, Ken and I talked about his personal journey as a science fiction writer, about the concerns that motivated him as he wrote his first dozen or so novels, and about what he hopes to accomplish now that he has inarguably arrived at the pinnacle of his chosen profession.

I think you’ll find the story of how it came to pass that Ken MacLeod & I first met and found ourselves sharing a few pints at the Hawes Inn, in South Ferry, Scotland, where R.L. Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, to be quite charming. But it’s a story for another day.

Among the many things that Ken and I discussed were: his early (sad but funny) history as a writer, with rejection after rejection after rejection until he finally got his first story published; genetic editing & bioethics; pre- and post-singularity science fiction; the notion of science fiction as ‘a literature of ideas, not people’ — both the negative & positive connotations of that characterization; how Ken became a computer programmer after reading an advert in the back of a magazine when he was stuck in a dead-end job, poor, with a wife & 2 kids depending on him; how he wrote a novel, as a lark, as a takeoff on the “alien space bats” trope in science fiction criticism; his friendship — !from a connection they shared with a beloved high school teacher of English! — with the late Ian Banks; science fiction & Marxism, why Ken feels that he doesn’t have the necessary skills to write a non-science fiction novel, but thinks he could have made a lot more money if he did, and a whole lot more.

As soon as I figure out a few technical details & make a few edits, I’ll post our conversation. I think you’re going to love it.

Soon thereafter I’ll be posting a conversation I had with Cory Doctorow more than twenty years ago about many topics similar to those that Ken MacLeod & I discussed. I think you’ll find it fascinating to compare Cory’s predictions about the future in 2003 to the reality of today.

After posting the MacLeod & Doctorow interviews I’ll post a bunch of others with interesting writers and scientists that I’ve recorded over the last quarter century.

And then I’ll get into fresh new interviews — people who’ve signed up but who I haven’t yet interviewed — about which I’ll have more to say Real Soon Now.

If you’re a subscriber to Sundman figures it out!, you’re automatically subscribed to The Desired Effect podcast mailing list. But if you don’t care about podcasts you can easily unsubscribe. I look forward to hearing from you once The Desired Effect goes live.

Stay tuned, and wish me luck!

Heart to heart, a one-year retrospective

At 9:00 this morning, in my doctor’s office at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, I had my annual physical. I weigh 16 pounds less than I did at my physical last year, yay. At the conclusion of the examination, Doc said, “You look good, I have no concerns, see you next year.”

At my annual checkup one year ago, this same doctor said, “your heartbeat is irregular and averaging 140 beats per minute. I’m sending you to the emergency room.”

Coincidentally enough, just a few days before that fateful checkup I had written a Sundman figures it out! essay about some remarks made by Damar Hamlin, the NFL player for the Buffalo Bills who had experienced cardiac arrest on national TV during the course of football game.

Upon my discharge from Salem Hospital, where I had been taken by ambulance from Martha’s Vineyard Hospital for treatment of tachycardia & atrial fibrillation, I wrote another Sundman figures it out! essay. I include both essays below.

Interlude: Grab a free book! Grab two of ‘em! (With a backstory)

Using the website Bookfunnel I’ve given away nearly two thousand ebook copies of my books — mostly Biodigital and The Pains, but a few dozen copies each of Acts of the Apostles and Cheap Complex Devices — in exchange for a signup to this very blog/newsletter.

Now, despite having given away nearly 2,000 free books in exchange for an email address in the cause of getting people to subscribe to Sundman figures it out!, I have fewer than 2,000 subscribers, total, to this gazette (about 1,970 as I write this).

And I know for sure that at least 1,100 subscribers got here by other, non-Bookfunnel, routes.

In other words, simple arithmetic tells me that more than half of the people who subscribed to this newsletter, via a Bookfunnel promo, in order to get a free book immediately, or eventually, unsubscribed. I think that’s pretty rude, frankly, but I also think of it as ‘slippage’.³

“Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.”

I have no idea how many people who downloaded free copies of my books actually read them, but I am somewhat confident that the number is greater than zero. Similarly I have no idea how many people now reading this post got here by way of a Bookfunnel promo.

But if you’re one of such people, I would really, really appreciate your saying so. Please just say hello, either in a comment or by email.

Anyway, here are the two most recent Bookfunnel promos, currently running, and I would appreciate your clicking on the images below, whether you have any interest in downloading a free book or not. Every time anybody clicks on one of these images it improves my ‘reputation’ at the Bookfunnel site, which helps me in esoteric ways we most certainly needn’t go into.

This one includes my hackertastic nano-bio-cyberpunk novel Biodigital, about a Silicon Valley messiah and the cult of techbros who venerate him.

This one includes my astoundingly and depressingly prescient 2008 illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains, set in a trippy world that’s a mashup of George Orwell’s 1984 and the 1984 of Ronald Reagan, about a couple of decent people trying to survive in a Freemerica run by an unholy cabal of fascist theocrats and transhumanist techbros.

As Jeb Bush would have said if he were a substacker, please click

Since launching this thing in late January, 2023, I’ve posted close to 70 essays. I think all of these Montaigneian essays are at least good (modulo some infelicities of style, etc). A lot of them are great, and a few of them are just fucking awesome.

That’s me. Your mileage may vary.

But of all of these essays, only two of them have fewer than 1,000 views as I post this note tonight. This bugs my inner Adrian Monk to no end. Won’t you please help & take a look?

A Scared Firefighter up in the Bucket, part three, as of this posting, has 999 views. It’s true that you’ll get a lot more out of reading this post if you first read parts one and two of this three part essay. But that’s not my concern here. My concern is getting it to at least 1,000 views. Paraphrasing that immortal line from Jeb Bush, please click.

Easy Was, the third Sundman figures it out! essay I ever wrote, remains one of my favorites — or in any event I consider it canonical, inasmuch as it spells out my ambition for this endeavor when I kicked it off, and I think it still holds up pretty damn well.

Plus, even if you skip my written words, there’s that awesome, awesome, awesome ‘Easy Was’ photograph.

I’m sincerely and deeply proud of having rescued this photo from the passing flow in my twitter feed a few years ago. Some day, if the world ever gets its act together, this photograph, by twitter poster “scibblenest,” will hang on the wall of a prominent museum, inspiring awe in every person capable of awe who sees it.

That’s all for now. Please do write, you bastids.

Cheerio!

1. There’s a story behind my choice of The Desired Effect as the name for the podcast. A story I’ll tell at some point. Maybe.

2. World Science Fiction Convention, the largest & most prestigious such convention, held each year at a different city on Earth; this year in Glasgow, Scotland.

3. I tried to find the episode of Breaking Bad where Jesse & Walter have a very consequential discussion about ‘slippage,’ but I couldn’t find it, sorry.