Infoquake

My friend Lou Anders, who works over at science fiction & fantasy publisher Pyr (www.pyrsf.com), just sent me some info on a book that just came out which is very different from the usual SF novel, one he hopes will have an appeal beyond the typical reader into a broader readership of thrillers, mysteries, and even nonfiction fans, readers of Wired and Slashdot, etc.

Lou's usually a modest guy (I think it must be something to do with his Deep South upbringing!), so when he e-mails me about a book like this, I sit up and take notice.

I checked out the book's web site, quickly found I could identify with some of the author's real world experiences in working in the Internet industry in the late 1990s, and placed an order at Amazon.co.uk .

Lou describes David Louis Edelman's Infoquake as "the world's first science fiction business novel, set in a dot-com like industry of the future. It's a world of high tech product launches, corporate rivalry, industrial espionage, government interferance, etc...

"We're describing it as 'Dune meets the Wall Street Journal,'" he told me, and it's had some great reviews from the likes of Publishers Weekly ("a slick high-finance melodrama and dizzying technical speculation lift Edelman's SF debut.... Natch's being a borderline sociopath makes him extremely creative in business tactics". )

Edelman has a background in Web programming and marketing and has built an amazing website in support of his book, (www.infoquake.net). The site features audio downloads/podcasts of the first seven chapters of his book, online excerpts, original artwork, and a wealth of additional background material on the world of Infoquake, much of it unique to the site.

"We're marketing this book to the usual science fiction magazines and websites," says Lou, "but I feel this one really has appeal beyond that audience. It should appeal to business people, fans of technotrillers, technophiles, people who read Wired magazine or slashdot. A whole host of people, in other words, beyond the usual suspects!

"I think this book deserves to find its audience and that that audience exists beyond the normal pool of readers we usually market to."

Pushing one of his books like this is not something Lou makes a habit of, so when he plugs a new title like this, he really wants it to attract some attention (not that he doesn't want people to buy other books he edits, but I can count on one had the number of times he's really pushed one of his projects like this to his friends in an e-mail).

Check out www.infoquake.net and see what you think.