Hugh Howey's Blog, page 8

A Question of Voice

What stories are we allowed to tell? Can authors create any kind of protagonist? Or do their main characters need to look just like them?

Over the years, I’ve written a lot of books with female protagonists. I’ve written a book that features a gay man. I’ve written from the perspective of aliens, robots, zombies, minorities, the young and the old.

Am I allowed to get away with this?

My last published series of stories were told from the perspective of a black mother, a black man, and a young woman. None of them had backgrounds like mine. Does this violate the rules of good literature? Is it dishonest? What do you all think?

Five or six years ago, I was at a conference with Shonda Rhimes, and we sat over breakfast one morning and discussed this very topic. Shonda has written some of the best TV in the last decade, and a lot of her characters are white men, white women, black men. I mean, you can’t be a fiction writer and only write about yourself. You have to try and imagine what life is like for others and populate your stories with a realistically diverse cast.

“Anybody can write about whatever experience they want,” Shonda said. “The problem starts when someone tries to write about a definitive experience that isn’t theirs. A white man can write about a black woman, but he can’t write about the black experience. Only a black woman can attempt that, and even then it’ll be her take on that experience.”

I didn’t understand the distinction at first, but Shonda explained that she could write a believable white man, because that’s the gift and necessity of a fiction writer, but she would never try to capture whiteness or maleness from a place of authority. It can seem like a fuzzy boundary between the two, but I don’t think it takes a lot of work to tell them apart. There is enough diversity within each group that almost any character can appear valid in isolation. The problem comes when someone outside of a group attempts to speak for that group.

But maybe the rules don’t work in both directions? And maybe they shouldn’t. Does JK Rowling get asked how she could possibly write about being a young boy? One of the most common questions I get is, “When’s the last time you brushed your hair?” A close second is, “How do you write from the female perspective?”

The more diverse a character I choose, the more untoward it seems. I have a WIP with a trans high school character, something I know nothing about. Except that high school was confusing as fuck to me, hormones and peer pressure made me question everything, and it often felt like I was trapped in someone else’s body. I never wanted to be a woman, but the discomforts and pressures I did feel make it easy to empathize. Coming out as an atheist to my parents and peers in the deep south gives me at least a hint of what it must be like to come out as gay. Having a gay uncle and gay friends helps me write gay characters. But I can never write about “THE” gay experience.

That’s how I see it, anyway. I’d love to hear your thoughts. My next planned novel is about a bisexual seventeen-year-old black girl of Pacific island descent. She also has magical abilities. I know nothing about what it means to be any of these things, but I can imagine what it’s like to be her. I want to tell her story, and I don’t want anyone who resembles her to think I’m trying to tell their story. I never could. Only they can.

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The SPSFC begins!

Welcome to the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition! Or the spussfic, as we like to call it around here. What in the world is the SPSFC? It’s an opportunity to shine a great big laser beam on wonderful works of self-pubbed science fiction.

For a few years now, Mark Lawrence has been organizing a contest known as the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. Science fiction authors and bloggers have been clamoring for something similar. So with Mark’s blessing and science fiction’s habit of looking to its sister genre for inspiration, we are going to run this pretty much the same way.

Ten book bloggers, up to 300 science fiction novels, a year of reading and reviewing. We will end up with ten finalists and one winner. Next year, we will do it all over again.

The winner gets a badge and a blaster set to “stunning.” Most importantly, they get heaps of recognition and bragging rights. All the finalists and many of the entries will naturally get more eyeballs on their books, which is what authors and eye-eating aliens crave the most.

Some rules:

1) Your book must be a standalone or the first in a series.
2) One book per author. So send your best!
3) It must be a novel, not an anthology.
4) The book must be self-published and available for purchase now.
5) Works must be at least 50,000 words.

Phase 1 (June 30th – November 30th):

Each blogger will be assigned up to 30 novels. They will read as many as they feel compelled to finish. They then choose a finalist to send through to the end. They are of course encouraged to review any book they enjoy along the way.

They will also choose three books with their favorite cover art for a separate contest.

Phase 2 (December 1st – May 31st):

Each blogger will now read the other 9 finalists and vote for their favorite. They are encouraged to review any of the other finalists as well.

Phase 3:

We will announce an SPSFC winner for the best novel and best cover art. There will be much rejoicing and the making of merry. Unlike our fantasy friends, the ending will be swift and there will only be one curtain call.

What authors need to know:

On June 3oth, we will open to submissions. So mark your calendars now! Ebooks will need to be sent in .mobi or .epub format. If we get over 300 submissions, we will winnow them down based on a very subjective slush-pile criteria. All entries will be listed and linked to on an upcoming announcement page.

What bloggers need to know:

Applications are now open to be one of our ten reviewers! Simply click here and fill out the form. As a former book blogger and reviewer, I know what you’re in for. It will be a lot of work, but if you enjoy helping readers find hidden gems, it will be rewarding.

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The Future of Crypto

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to crypto. One side claims that cryptocurrencies are a fad, a speculative bubble, and one day it’ll pop and most cryptocurrencies will be worthless. The other side says that crypto is the future, and one day they will replace banks and fiat currency and almost every transaction we make will use crypto.

The first future is pretty easy to imagine. We’ve seen speculative bubbles before, and we know how they end. There will be some lucky folks who got in and out and made some profits. There will be some unlucky folks who lost a lot of money. There will also be a lot of people left with mining hardware and facilities that are now worthless. It’s not an interesting future to discuss, because there’s little to imagine.

But let’s talk about a future in which all transactions are done in crypto and fiat money is worthless. This is the future that many of my friends are hopeful for and banking on. What will some of the results of their dream future look like?

For one, it’ll mean that they have wealth and power beyond imagining. By purchasing crypto early, they’ll be the future aristocracy. Meanwhile, people who aren’t born yet will have to purchase fractions of bitcoin or ethereum or whatever replaces both of them at much higher prices. Grandparents will have to convert their worthless fiat to sky-high crypto. The poor, the non-tech-savvy, those who don’t happen to have financial freedom during the transition period, all those people are out of luck. This transfer of wealth will be staggering and inhumane.

There are good equivalents to this possible outcome in recent human history. It will be like the first people who stole American land and South American gold. The people who owned slaves. These groups established piles of wealth and created an income inequality that persists today. Future generations had to settle for the slivers of wealth that these early adopters carved out of their massive holdings. A mere quarter of an acre of land sold off by someone who stole the acres by the tens of thousands. Crypto is going to do the same thing to an entire new class of people.

Keep in mind, we are discussing here a future where the pro-crypto crowd is correct. This is their best case scenario, that they become vastly wealthy while everyone else suffers. Today, they think anyone critical of crypto is suffering from FOMO. In the future, they will be able to blame the poor for “not getting it” or “being dumb” or “too risk-averse” or “not doing their homework.” I’m sure this will go over well. (What I think would actually happen is that people who got wealthy via crypto would keep this to themselves, knowing that they didn’t contribute anything to society and that public resentment is high.)

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will have to buy slivers of crypto with a deflating fiat. The class warfare will not be pretty. This is unavoidable if crypto believers get the “bitcoin at a million” they say they crave. It’s not even a matter of timing or “getting in too late.” If everyone was told today that they needed to convert their fiat to crypto, the crush would drive up prices so fast that whoever was one minute later would have a worse future life than whoever booted up their computer quicker. This is the kind of lottery of inequality that these folks crave.

We’ve barely touched upon the social strife and the untold human suffering that will happen with a transfer to global crypto. Let’s look at the other ways that this future will be terrible.

In 2020, nearly two billion dollars of crypto were stolen. In a single year. Two billion dollars. Trust me, I get that fiat money can be stolen. I’ve been mugged three times. It’s no fun. I lost some cash and had to get credit cards replaced. Imagine a future where all your wealth is as safe as a password. Because that’s the future that crypto aficionados crave.

Crypto is not as secure as its proponents want you to believe. There are technical faults. Any consortium of nodes that reaches 51% can modify the blockchain, inserting false transactions. In the future we’re talking about, the pressure to try this will grow exponentially. A hundred trillion dollars could be at stake someday if the entire economy is on a blockchain. Pretending that this doesn’t change motivations and risk assessments is a delusion.

There are other technical faults. In 2017, hackers found a vulnerability in Ethereum wallets that allowed them to siphon off $208 million dollars. The rest of the funds were saved only because “white hat” hackers used the same exploit to grab and distribute the rest of the coins. In our future where “crypto wins,” the target will be enormous and the losses insane. Currently, crypto is a fraction of the global market. The two billion a year in stolen funds will grow as exponentially as its adoption.

Let’s go back to passwords, because that’s the only way to keep your crypto safe. When you buy crypto, you are given a long, complex, unique key that gives you ownership of that crypto. If you lose that key, or someone else gets it, you are toast. Tens of billions of dollars worth of crypto have already been lost simply because people forgot their keys, forgot where they wrote them down, or lost the digital file that they saved it in.

Most people use a wallet company like coinbase or Robinhood to keep this key safe. These are the same people who trust Target and Home Depot to not lose their email addresses to hackers. Your money is not safe in crypto. On a long enough timeline, it is only a matter of when you will be hacked.

There’s also the problem of state actors. When the entire world runs on crypto, the pressure to legislate and control it will be enormous. Crypto is not a distributed network. It isn’t peer-to-peer. It’s node-to-node. Peer-to-peer would mean that if you own some crypto and make some transactions, you are a part of this cool new banking system. The reality is that only the miners in “proof of work” networks and the biggest players in a “proof of stake” network control a node. We are already seeing issues with this, as major owners get to dictate hard forks and changes to code on their whim. There are still little guys and big guys. It’s just now, you’re trusting some oligarch in Russia and the Chinese Communist Party instead of Bank of America. What could go wrong?

I haven’t mentioned the environmental costs yet, because that’s the stick we naysayers have been using to beat the dead horse for years. In this pro-crypto future, we can imagine that proof of stake beat out proof of work, and that all energy is green, or whatever fantasy floats your boat. It won’t change the fact that we’ll add a ton to emissions to get to that future. Or the waste of manufacturing silicon and hard drives to process and store the blockchain. Speaking of storage, Houston we have a problem.

The bitcoin blockchain (which is just a type of database) is currently around 300 gigabytes in size. If the 600 or so billion annual transactions were done in crypto, that blockchain would be growing by 130 terabytes per year. The movement and validation of blocks would absolutely choke existing infrastructure. There is no long-term plan here. It is just people attempting to get rich quick while creating problems that didn’t exist before.

Late adopters (the elderly, the poor, the young, the tech illiterate), will all suffer in the future that crypto lovers crave. Trillions will be stolen with little recourse. Even though ledgers are public, techniques like “peel chain” and “chain hopping” make it possible to wash stolen crypto clean, and new techniques will stay ahead of law enforcement. People will lose entire fortunes simply because they forgot where they wrote down that password, or because a tech startup based in the Caymans got hacked, or the owner ran off with the funds. These are just the KNOWN issues that are already happening and will scale as the “crypto future” arrives.

Keep in mind that all of this suffering will happen in order to solve problems that don’t exist. The pro-crypto crowds want to put an end to the hegemony of banks, replacing that with a hegemony of wallet app startups and foreign actors who build out server farms. They want a ledger that is immutable, which means when someone puts child porn in there, it stays there forever. From what I can tell, they mostly like crypto because it makes them rich while doing no work and not contributing to society. Or so they can buy drugs, guns, traffic humans, or purchase pardons.

Transactions today can take days to process and can cost $20 a pop. Scale this up in the crypto future, and you’ll have worse clogs and higher fees. It’s easy to imagine in this future that someone comes along and sees the wildly fluctuating prices of crypto, the constant invention of a new one making the old ones worthless, and they say, “Hey, we are an old and established country with a system of laws and stable courts and a big military to keep our borders secure. Store your money with us, and we will create a banking network that can process one billion transactions per day at very little cost. We will insure every account you own for up to $250,000. Our currency will be stable enough that you won’t worry when you earn money how much it’ll be worth when you spend it. We will pressure those who do business with us to obey best practices and international law. We will not make you memorize complex passwords or else lose access to your life savings.

In other words, the system we have today. Which works well enough and can be improved with tech rather than replaced by tech. The future renegade who proposes our modern system will be the real disruptor. But hey, I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Because the pro-crypto future I describe above is far too wasteful, illogical, and cruel for us to ever allow it to come to pass.

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NFTs for Authors

Cryptocurrency is bunk. Bitcoin is absolute garbage. Elon Musk is a weirdo.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten rid of those folks (0r at least moved them to the comments), let’s talk about NFTs, or what I like to call “the worst acronym since PCMCIA.” NFTs sound to me like an alien encounter mixed with some kind of low-fee investment fund. But don’t worry, what they’re known as will probably change in the future as they become widely adopted. And they will. NFTs are going to change how future Earthlings think about digital information, art, and ownership.

Before we get to the good, a note about the bad. Like other crypto nonsense, NFTs rely on very powerful computers crunching very difficult equations, which uses a lot of power. Pretty much everything crypto is bad for the environment. That’s an issue that needs to be solved, and it will be. Cryptophiles will claim that many server farms are built near hydro and sources of green energy, but that ignores the fact that demand for energy is growing and for very silly reasons. So yeah, right now NFTs are contributing to greenhouse emissions, and that will only change when all power is green or blockchains are handled differently.

What the hell is a blockchain, you might ask? It’s just an online database. It’s an Excel spreadsheet in the cloud. Nothing more complicated than that.

Okay, it’s a little more complicated. Blockchains are a supposedly un-hackable and un-fakable shared database. Everyone can trust what’s in there, because it’s been verified by other users. The blockchain is public, so people can see who owns what. Now, the accounts used to make transactions are often opaque, so all you can often see is what account now owns how much of a thing, which is why crypto is often used for terrible and nefarious purposes (or for glorified gambling).

NFTs are a little different. This awful acronym stands for non-fungible token, which basically means a unique and indestructible digital commodity. This blog post could be an NFT. As the creator of this blog post, I could agree to sell it to my friend Hank Green for the princely sum of $1. Hank now owns this blog post. Nobody else does. And he can easily verify his ownership because the transaction is on the blockchain (that Excel spreadsheet).

“What’s the big deal?” you might ask. There are tons of big deals, and the more I listen to discussions about NFTs and read others’ thoughts on them, the more I see folks getting this all wrong. NFTs aren’t important because of what the people who don’t care about them think; NFTs are massively important because of what the actual users think. There’s nothing stopping someone from copying and pasting this blog post and sharing it wherever they like. They can do the same for any of my ebooks. There’s a lot of illegal stuff you can already do with digital content that people will continue to do with NFTs. Want to steal music and ebooks all day long? Go right ahead. But those are still multi-billion dollar markets supported by the legitimate users.

So here’s your first lesson on anything to do with NFTs: When you hear someone say, “What’s to stop someone from making a copy of that art?” just walk away. Pretty much any sentence that begins with “What’s to stop someone…” is a sign that this person wants to discuss the criminal activity of an enterprise rather than its uses. Walk away. Nothing interesting will be learned there. All digital art is steal-able right now, and yet the markets for digital art persist and thrive. People pay for it. They pay for Netflix and Disney+ instead of torrenting everything.

Rule #1: Ignore all discussions that focus on the criminal activity.

Side note: this is a little different from crypto, where pretty much the only thing you should discuss is the criminal activity.

So let’s say Hank Green puts together a book about NFTs, or terrible blog posts, or does an audio series on explaining these things. He owns this post now, is its sole owner, so he can do whatever he wants. He can use the blog post in his book and charge money for it. There will be no disputes about the legality of this, because the transaction is on the ledger. Imagine this for stock image photography, cover art, so much else of how digital art is created. In a far enough future, attribution will always be included, and if it isn’t, one can infer that stolen goods are being transacted. NFTs are going to be great for artists.

Many artists are already enjoying income and residuals from the sales of their goods. An original Rick and Morty doodle went for a princely sum. But there will be plenty of uses for not-yet-famous artists as well. Let me give you an example.

Now, keep in mind that this space is in its infancy. NFTs have only been around for a few years, and almost zero innovation has gone into their deployment and use. Right now, NFTs are mostly digital collector’s coins, which have value simply because people value them. Nothing wrong with that. Beanie Babies were a thing, and stamps were not meant to have value above and beyond sending a letter.

But NFTs will become so much more than this. Let’s say I write a book like BEACON 23, and instead of self-publishing it or selling the rights to a publisher, I decide to create 10,000 official numbered copies of this book. I’m going to sell each one for $5. My hope is to sell out of them eventually. But the fun only begins there.

When I set up the BEACON 23 NFT, I include illustrations from Ben Adams and make sure the art is attributed to him. Every original transaction of BEACON 23 sends $0.20 to Ben. Mike Corely, who did the cover art, gets attribution and $0.20. David Gatewood, who edited the book, also gets $0.20. They get a percentage of every transaction, but they also have their names attached to the work in a way that can’t be destroyed or altered. No more wondering who did a piece of art. The creators are intimately tied to the piece. As is the current owner.

But it gets cooler. Once you sell an NFT, the new owner can now do what they please. They might try to sell it for more or less money. Some NFT exchanges will be set up to leave original creators out of these transactions, but I believe the mature NFTs that will come to dominate this space will give the originator full control of all transactions going forward. Which simply means that if someone sells a copy of this book again, the author gets X percentage of that sale. The cover artist gets X percent. And so on.

These will be very small percentages. The owner of the art will be able to recoup most or all of their original investment. But it won’t be insignificant. Think about how used books are currently handled. You buy a book for full price, and the author gets about 15% of what you paid. That’s the last time they’ll make money from that copy of the book. After you read it, you take it to a used bookstore, where you get a measly dollar. Two if you take store credit. The bookstore will then turn around and sell that ratty copy for five bucks, keeping all the profit. This is the prevalent system today that we all know and probably love. It’s terrible for authors and publishers.

In the future, there will be a secondhand market for digital art that includes the artist in every transaction. And I believe legitimate users will see this as far superior. They will enjoy knowing that some of what they are spending is going to support the creators of the art. We know this is true because Patreon does considerable business. But here, the transaction is more transparent: I’m paying you for THIS piece of art. I own it now. I can keep it or sell it to another user.

Consider for a moment your favorite artists and what you would pay to own an original piece from them, even if it’s digital. Would I pay $5 for a Stephen King short story that I really own? Of course I would. I already do that on Amazon, and I don’t really own that work. Amazon could decide to remove it from my device or from sale altogether. I also don’t have the ability to sell this story to someone else. I basically pay for the right to read it, to borrow it, and that’s it.

Same goes for all the music, TV, and cinema we consume. We don’t own it. Never will. With NFTs, that’s no longer true. We not only own a thing, we can prove it.

The major market for NFTs will probably be in the videogame space. You’ll own a sword that’s really yours, that you can sell or trade. Or a castle or a spaceship. These are already massive economies, but it will all become more legitimate. Think it’ll only be gaming and media consumption? The future will only become more digital-centric. Meeting spaces for business, avatars, animations, backdrops, attire, will all be a part of our online lives, and people are going to pay real money to stand apart, to signify their interests and personalities, no different than how we wear t-shirts, watches, or carry expensive handbags today.

Our world is getting more and more digital. How we parcel that world out and assign ownership is tricky, precisely because of all the nefarious “What’s to stop someone from…?” questions. Well, NFTs answer those issues. They will create a marketplace for us legitimate users. And the only rule of NFTs is that these are the only people we concern ourselves with.

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My Publishing Values

Value listing is one of the more important thought exercises I’ve discovered over the years. I was introduced to this by a friend, and my first attempt was to list my top 10 overall values in the world. This sounds easy enough, but you have to do it in order. So what goes higher on that list, family or friends? Where do you rank truth and honesty, without which most of the other things we value can’t exist or be trusted?

Does science make the list of things we value, considering the lives it has saved and made more pleasant? Where do you rank education and democracy? One way to answer these questions is to look around the world at places that enjoy the benefits of one more than the other. Would you rather live among one of the remaining hunter/gatherer tribes with no science? Or in a country like China with no democracy?

The list you end up with is not nearly as important as the act of creation itself. It’s the wrestling with the thing that matters. As you imagine going without what’s dear to you, your appreciation of them can grow. And as you order the things you value, you can ask yourself if you are putting your energies into the things highest on the list. Quite often we find ourselves living by someone else’s values and not our own. Because we too rarely sit down and suss these questions out for ourselves.

All this came to mind recently when someone emailed me an old blog post of mine about what we should value in the publishing industry. When I used to travel to book conferences and give talks, a frequent theme of mine was that readers and writers should be the focus of this industry, not bookstores and publishers. That might sound quaint or obvious, but it’s not how the industry is covered. It’s mostly seen as a transaction between publishers (the producers of books) and bookstores (the retailers). How those entities are doing, what they need, where they can improve and grow, was pretty much every article in the trade press for many decades. People obsessed over what B&N was doing and then later Amazon. The rest was agony and gossip among and about the big 6 publishers (now the big 5).

That began to change when Amazon came along and decided to sell books online. And this change was not because of self-publishing or e-books. The Kindle was many years away. It was because of Amazon’s 1995 innovation, the customer review. Suddenly, readers mattered. We take this innovation for granted, but at the time people thought Amazon was making a mistake. Customers would rant and complain! They’d bash the very product the retailer was trying to sell! This happened, of course, but mostly people shared the pros and cons and helped other shoppers make better decisions. A lot of Amazon’s success comes from this early trust in its users.

When Amazon launched the Kindle and allowed anyone to upload a book to its website, an even louder contingent of pundits would decry the decision. This would end bookselling as we know it, they said. It would destroy the book discovery process, they lamented. Even authors got in the act by predicting a tsunami of crap that would make it impossible to find decent reads. First, Amazon was giving the reader way too much power and now they were doing the same for writers. For an industry that valued publishers and bookstores the most, Amazon’s every decision was anathema.

But was that really everyone’s value list? If you ask most people to rank their publishing values, publishers would probably end up near the very bottom, perhaps just higher than professional book critics. Bookstores would go near the very top of most snap lists, but where would they really rank if a proper value list was made? The only way to answer that is to wrestle with our own list and to ask others to do the same. In a very long-winded way, I’m going to do that right now. Come along with me if you like.

One of the joys of value listing are the chicken-and-egg problems that arise immediately. Can you have books and not authors? The answer is yes. Perhaps there’s a future where no new books are written, but we still have all the classics and what came before. Okay, can you have books and no readers? Of course. I wrote books for quite some time with no readers. They just sit there. So is it books we value the most? Or is it the act of them being read?

What about readers without books? It’s not technically reading, but we had a very long and rich oral tradition before writing and literacy became more common. Would I rather have stories being told and enjoyed over a world full of books that no one can read? Now we’re zeroing into the top of my list. Readers win out over books themselves, because if the physical things went away, we could still have Story with a capital s. Audiobooks and the oral tradition could survive. This would be a world without writers, so no new stories, which is a shame. But it’s better than a world full of writers if none of their stories are being heard.

My list thus far:

1: Readers

I’ve already decided that the shape story comes in is not as important as the act of them being told and enjoyed. So books and bookstores are not yet a priority. Right now I just have people enjoying previously concocted stories as they are spoken aloud or listened to from a recording. What we need are more stories, so to the list we add writers:

1: Readers
2: Writers

The audience and the artist. Getting these two down in this order makes almost every decision I’ve made as an author, bookseller, speaker, publisher, blogger jump right out at me. Lower prices and more reading options for readers. Better pay, better contracts, fewer barriers to entry for writers. This is why value listing is so important. If you rank books #1, you value a world of dusty or bare shelves. But with these two down, do books now come third? Or is an e-book only world better if it includes publishers or agents and the value they add? Or is a retailer for e-books more important than a world full of books but not a single bookstore? Where do I rank books, publishers, and bookstores?

Behind editors, that’s where.

1: Readers
2: Writers
3: Editors

Whoa. Really? Yes, dear reader. I wouldn’t have published a single book without the input and courage I received from my editors. That includes my mother, sister, cousin, online friends, and my writing club members. Editors go back to the oral tradition mentioned above. They were the people honing and refining story to make them better, offering suggestions and input, often becoming storytellers themselves. They are the super-reader. The beta-reader. The book-perfecter.

Would you prefer a bookstore full of unedited manuscripts over an oral tradition of finely honed masterpieces? I doubt many sober lovers of story would come to this conclusion if forced to decide. Perhaps those who have never seen a rough draft and don’t realize how far that last level of polish takes a work.

Editors are key. They are more important than physical books. and I have to rank them accordingly. Within this group are the agents who act as editors but do so much more. Again, this is why these listing exercises are so useful. Editors add tons of value but are rarely discussed when we talk about our love of books. Speaking of which, can we finally add books to the list?

Not so fast. We are back at the dreaded retailer/book/publisher question from earlier. What does a world without a book retailer look like? This means no sidewalk shops or bazaars. No online retail. No used bookstores. No place that transacts for the sale of a book at all. We have eager readers, talented authors, capable editors… do we want them producing book-shaped things but nobody can earn a living from their efforts? What about having a retailer like Audible, which would allow easy access to all these books, a steady income for many authors and editors, but no physical books?

It’s the earnings side that has me putting bookstores next on my list, before we even have books! So e-books and audiobooks only. For many, I know books would have shown up by now, and that’s a fair call. But then authors and editors are working for free forever. And that’s something I can’t value over the physical shape a story takes.

1: Readers
2: Writers
3: Editors
4: Retailers (digital only)

Painful, I know. It’s not supposed to be easy. Surely we get books now, please?! I’m writing this as a kid who was obsessed with books and who has remained surrounded by them ever since. I can’t walk past a bookstore without popping inside. When I visit friends, I often end up standing in front of their shelves reading spines, comparing tastes. Any antique rummaging begins and ends with the boxes of books. And yet … they aren’t going to make my top 5. Because now that writers can earn a living in my value list, I have to add the institutions that make sure everyone has access to books. Next on my list is libraries.

1: Readers
2: Writers
3: Editors
4: Retailers (digital only)
5: Libraries

Libraries without books? I’m as aghast as you are. But if you are going to give stories the shape of a book and not allow libraries in this world, I beg you to reconsider. Libraries are so critical that I very nearly rank them #4 on my list, except that this makes the career of a writer impossible. Libraries do more than provide a place for people to enjoy stories for free. They provide expertise in finding those stories and in cataloging them. As stories have become more and more digital, libraries have added even more value. Yes, I rank them higher than books. But thank goodness the physical object can finally go on the list.

1: Readers
2: Writers
3: Editors
4: Retailers (digital only)
5: Libraries
6: Books

Whew. Man, that hurt to wait so long, but I can’t reason through it any other way. Now that we have books, we can reclassify retailers as bookstores. Of course our old world could have had e-book kiosks and digital-only brick and mortar stores. All that’s changed is the container our stories go inside.

Once you get past the really hard decisions, it’s tempting to slap the rest of the list together. Resist this temptation. Weigh the rest with the same level of care. Make sure you aren’t leaving anything out. We still need cover artists, audiobook narrators, publishers, professional book reviewers. These will round out my top ten (I consider large scale printers covered by the category of “books” itself).

It’s difficult to choose between cover artists and narrators to be honest. Both deserve much more recognition than they get. Good cover art can make or break a story’s success. But as audiobooks have grown, and to pay homage to the critical importance of how this industry got its start with oral storytelling, I have to give narrators the nod. I know audiobookphiles who choose their next purchase over the voice more than the writer, and for good reason.

1: Readers
2: Writers
3: Editors
4: Bookstores
5: Libraries
6: Books
7: Narrators
8: Cover artists

That leaves publishers and reviewers, who should not feel completely diminished. Making the list at all is something. There are entities that add tons of value to the storytelling enterprise who aren’t even mentioned here, like formatters and typesetters, booksellers and bloggers. But the final list goes:

1: Readers
2: Writers
3: Editors
4: Bookstores
5: Libraries
6: Books
7: Narrators
8: Cover artists
9: Publishers
10: Critics

That’s my list. Disagree or agree? What would your list look like? Who didn’t make the list and should have?

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WOOL Boxset Giveaway Winners (and more!)

Announcing the winners of the Great WOOL Boxset Giveaway:

And I’ll be updating this post after the video with details about the surprise announcement…

…which is that: We’re doing it again! The response to this giveaway was overwhelming. After I saw the comments pour in, I asked if we could do another 10 boxsets, and HMH was more than keen. Instead of choosing from the original post, we’re gonna reward those of you who stuck with us for the sequel, so comment below for a chance to win.

Congratulations to our previous winners. And good luck to everyone!

(Remember that karma probably plays no part in this, but if you want to share the news about this boxset with friends/family/followers, it couldn’t hurt: Here’s the boxset on Amazon. It’s super affordable for all this goodness.

And if you’ve read these books in their individual form and want to write a review on the boxset product page, that really couldn’t possibly hurt either. Thanks so much for the reviews thus far. I’ve read them all and they mean so much!)

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Ultimate WOOL Unboxing and Giveaway!

This is the most excited I’ve been about a blog post in ages. Why? Because this one is all about you, dear reader. And it’s about getting you some FREE SWAG.

Okay, not swag. That’s underselling it. Swag would be like a t-shirt or a tote bag or a ballpoint pen that leaks and ruins a nice shirt. How about instead we give away these puppies!

The Ultimate WOOL Boxset :)

What you are looking here is the Ultimate WOOL Boxset! Inside the custom wrap, you’ll find the original trilogy (with a new essay in each), plus a collection of the three post-WOOL stories that originally appeared in the Apocalypse Triptych. This little chapbook won’t exist anywhere else; you can only get it with this boxset.

The entire package is drool-worthy. I’m looking at mine on my bookshelf right now, and never has a trilogy looked so amazing on display. The stairs connecting across the spine and the figures on those stairs tell a story all on their own. The entire scene wraps around the box with little surprises to discover. We worked for months to pull this together, and when I saw them for the first time… well, I got quite emotional. Here’s the video if you missed it live.

Okay, Hugh, fine, great video and all, but what about the free stuff you mentioned?! Well, my publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt sent me more copies than I needed, so I told them I was going to give away the extras (after my sister and mom got their copies), and they said please don’t give away those five boxsets. Give TEN of them away instead!

TEN BOXSETS!!! Deep breath. I have the best publisher in the entire world. I mean, if only ten of you enter, you’ll all get one! That’s math!

Here’s what you need to do to enter:

– Leave a comment below. You can say how much you love this series, or if you’ve never read it before. You can say you just like free stuff, or that you’re looking for a new doorstop. Maybe you need a dirty Santa gift or you’re scared we might run out of toilet paper nationwide again. Whatever. Leave a comment. This step is MANDATORY

– If you’ve already read this series, go write a quick review of it on Amazon! Maybe you’ve already reviewed these books elsewhere, so most of your work is already done. Book reviews don’t have to be long, they just have to be honest and heartfelt. Write a sentence. Even if you hated it. This step is OPTIONAL

– If you like turning other readers onto great books, share the link to the boxset with friends and family on your social media pages! If they go out and buy a copy, they won’t steal yours! Theft protection! Genius! This is also OPTIONAL

Really, as long as you don’t believe in karma and you aren’t superstitious at all, you just need to comment below to enter. Sharing the amazing news about this singular work of fiction in this gorgeous new packaging is entirely up to you. Writing a review is entirely up to you. I won’t judge.

After a few days, I’ll use a random number generator to select the winners (the comments are numbered on my end, so it’s super easy). Make sure you use a real email address when you comment. Important: don’t put your email address in the comment itself, just in the form where it asks for your name and email address when you create the comment. Don’t worry, I can see it on my end and no one else can. I will never use this email to spam you or contact you for any other reason. I’ll simply email the winners to get your shipping addresses and you’ll have these beauties lickity-split.

For those of you who can’t wait, buy your copy now while they last! These things could actually sell out, and then I’ll have to strong-arm HMH into making more. Here’s a link at Amazon. If you can get the boxset through your local bookshop, please give them a try first. They can use all our help right now.

The price on these is amazing, pretty much what you’d pay for the books individually. In fact, even if you enter this giveaway you probably want to go buy a copy now to hedge your bets. If you win, your Christmas shopping is done! These are made to be read, not just collected, so they make great gifts for anyone who hasn’t blazed through the series already. Hook up your hipster friends before the TV show comes out!

That’s it. Comment away! Write a review! Share with your friends! Karma is totally real! (I think)

 

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The Price of Freedom

We were sitting on a friend’s porch, looking out over the ocean. The fence that holds back the dunes had an American flag affixed to it, held straight by a sea breeze. If asked what that flag meant, a thousand strangers would no doubt list some words in common. My guess is that “Freedom” would rank near the top, joined there by its synonym, Liberty.

Freedom is outright worshipped in the United States. It is craved everywhere, of course, but usually without thinking long on what that worship means. We do not really crave freedom. We only think we do. And this lip-service to a dangerous ideal creates far more problems than it solves. It’s a viral concept that has gotten us sick with unreason. We ought to inoculate ourselves to it.

The truth is that we are constrained at all sides, and this is for the best. Freedom would mean a life free of law and regulation. Freedom would mean drinking and driving if one feels like it, or running down the streets naked, or the ability to blast music at all hours, no matter what our neighbors think.

All civility, morality, law, and ethics lie in the gray area where one’s freedom begins and another’s is encroached. The only true freedom would be a world with a lone occupant, who could never disturb another, could never trespass, steal, even annoy. That is not our world. In our world, we cannot pollute, because all rivers lead to the sea. We cannot disturb the peace, because the peace is not ours alone. We share each other’s spaces, and this means there are far fewer things that we can do than those we cannot.

We are not free. This is a truth that must be accepted and then celebrated.

Let’s begin with acceptance. Sitting there on a friend’s porch, feeling as free as an open beach can make one feel, I pointed out that not one of us could stand up, take off our clothes, and go for a walk. The moment we did, an unspoken mutual compact with our neighbors would be broken and gears would spin into motion that would lead to our arrest and some subsequent fines. The most free thing of all: to take a stroll across the sand in the garb god gave us, would have us thrown in jail. We are free to sit with our clothes on. We are free to keep our music at sensible levels. We are free only to sit on our own property or that to which we’ve been invited. The scope of our freedom is narrow. There are only so many things that we are allowed to do. There are an infinite number which we cannot.

Accepting this is easy. Relishing it is more difficult. But let’s try for a moment.

I had a friend who did not like my view that our wills are not free. This is another illusion that we maintain, the idea that we can choose any action or thought at any time with no restrictions placed upon us. Free will does not exist, which I impressed upon my friend by asking her if she could choose to stop loving her husband. Could she, sitting there with him as we sipped our coffees, strike the love from her heart with zero provocation? Could she do it with the might of her supposedly free mind?

“Why would I want to?” she asked.

“To prove that you’re free,” I said. “You’re welcome to resume loving him immediately. Just try.”

The point was that we are as powerless to stop loving someone as we were powerless to stop ourselves from falling in love in the first place. And who would want such freedom? It would mean that our partner had no influence on how we feel about them, and just as sad, that our behaviors and choices had no influence on them! It would mean that our love for each other was cold choice, rather than an interplay of cause and effect in which our wills had little role to play.

If love is a choice, then it not only can be switched on and off on a whim, but it arrives with either a randomness or a calculation. The truth is that you had no freedom, and that lack of freedom says marvelous things. It means our actions and behaviors matter, especially to those who matter the most to us.

We have a difficult time appreciating the narrowness of our freedoms. We have an even more difficult time understanding just how that narrowness defines us.

On the beach that day, I discussed this with friends, and my partner brought up the freedoms some have that others do not. The disparity of our freedoms are stark in America today, as many cannot even feel safe on our streets because of the color of their skin. None of us are truly free, but some of us are freer than others.

Equality. That’s often what we mean when we cry for freedom. We mean the same rights as others, not the absolute freedom to do whatever we want. Equality means that whatever rules one person sets, the other gets. If congress grants healthcare and raises for themselves, then we the people ought to get healthcare and better wages. If a CEO expects no one to dump trash on his yard or shit in his pool, then we expect their chemicals to stay out of our streams. It’s the Golden Rule, the basis of all rational morality. We don’t wish to be free in our own actions; we want to be free from the ill actions of others. I won’t trespass if you won’t. I won’t steal if you won’t. Let’s both agree not to drink and drive. Treat me as I want to be treated, and I’ll do the same for you.

The outright worship of Freedom with a capital F takes us away from this morality. The same folks who fetishized freedom when they balked at the appearance of seatbelts now balk at the idea of wearing masks. These are the people who abhor regulations in general, when regulations are what allow drinkable water, paint free from lead, ozone holes healing themselves, lungs free from asbestos, and countless lives saved from myriad improvements to our cars and homes. It is not our freedoms that define us; it is the freedoms we gladly relinquish in this social compact with our neighbors.

One of the things I miss most during this pandemic is shaking hands, that warm embrace, the smallest and most benign of bodily hugs. It is said that the handshake was a way of showing our neighbor that we carried no stone nor axe. We come unarmed. The hypothetical freedom we might have to take another life is agreed by almost all to be abhorrent. It is not something that we want, and by shaking empty hands we flaunt our relinquishing of that freedom.

It is the freedoms we forego that define us. It is the choice we make to buckle up our kids, to work those extra hours to better provide for our families, the choice to spend our time on our chores rather than our leisure, or to go out of our way for our loved ones. It is the choice we make to not take advantage of others, to grant every stranger the gift of our compassion. The negative space of freedom is responsibility. Which is why the worship of Freedom with a capital F has made doucebags of so many.

Language is important. Words have heft. We use so many words out of habit without ever having long conversations with ourselves and others on what we mean by them. Where does morality come from? Is it absolute or does it sway? Is it objective or subjective? Who decides what’s right and wrong? And how do we structure society to make it as perfect as humanely possible?

Is freedom a good thing? What does it even mean to be free? There are so few things that we are allowed to do. In this moment, there are only a few living rooms I could walk into right now. There are very few places I could go undressed. At this hour, there would be consequences if I made too much noise. And my girlfriend expects me to be the kind man she knows me to be. My choices are squeezed down into this delicate space of lying in bed with my thoughts and my writing, our feet entangled, this city slumbering, all that I am because of how I’m not free. I would not want it any other way. What I do want is for everyone to have the same opportunity to be as equally unfree as I am.

It begins with an unraveling of stale ideas. Freedom is a word we should learn to abhor. It is a word full of chaos, anarchy, selfishness, nationalism, and trodding on the rights of others. There are better words for what we mean: Equality. Peace. Understanding. Compassion.

I know full well that this suggestion will rile up most readers. We live in a world where many do not have the freedoms the rest of us enjoy, and decrying the word may seem a place of privilege. But we also live in a world where other countries are far freer than the United States. Countries where a medical condition will not bankrupt, and where kids do not have active shooter drills at school. These are differences that require specific language and conversations, not the smothering blanket of Freedom. Because the worship of that word gives license for abuse from those with ill intentions.

It’s hard to argue with someone who claims the right of freedom to be an awful human being. Because we’re the ones who have given that concept undue power. Taking away that power forces the same douchebag to enunciate what they really mean. “I live in a free country” no longer gives cover to awful decisions once we are honest about how very few freedoms we really have and the fact that our ability to give up freedoms is what makes us civil and moral. When we equate freedom with incivility, we hear these people for what they really are.

Consider for a moment the people who are truly free to do what they want, whenever they want, without regard to the consequences of their behaviors. These people are sociopaths, psychopaths, or children who have yet to fully form concepts of civility. They are bullies. They are people with zero conscience. They would be my friend if she were truly able to stop loving her husband simply by the flick of a mental switch.

The worst people among us are the most free. It’s why sociopaths rise to the top of corporate and political ladders, because they are free to make choices that the rest of us cannot. I wonder how many of you agree with these last two paragraphs and have always noticed this? So why haven’t we equated a measure of freedom with a measure of evil before? The two go hand-in-hand.

Once again, because it bears repeating, the freedoms we give up define our morality. Think of the people we most look up to in terms of moral virtue. They are those who sacrifice much to walk a narrow path. Our usual stand-ins for virtue are the Ghandis, Christs, Buddhas, nuns, priests, saints of the world. It’s the things we choose not to do as much as the things we choose to do. It’s a turned cheek. An empty stomach. A vow of silence. An empty hand.

When I hear the word “freedom,” I cringe. I hear someone claiming sin is a virtue. I hear someone justifying their sociopathy. Be specific. Talk about voting rights. Talk about equality. Talk about equal pay. Talk about caring for the homeless. Talk about your ideals. Don’t give fodder to people who want freedom from consequence, freedom from consideration, freedom from the social compact that constrains us in the best bonds possible.

We are not free. And that’s a good thing.

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Ten Years of WOOL

It’s been a decade since I wrote a little story that changed my life and kept a ton of readers up past their bedtimes.

When I wrote WOOL, I never thought I’d live to see it impact so many people. All you can dream about as a new writer is getting one person to read and love your work. Never in a million years did I foresee these books being translated into over 40 languages and for millions of people to fall in love with Juliette and her struggles in the silo. A decade on, and the themes of this story are as meaningful and powerful as ever. So it’s with great pride that I announce today new editions of my bestselling series.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will be the first publisher in the US to have publishing rights for all the books. To mark the occasion, we’ve given the books a new look. Even better, I suggested we do a box set that included my SILO STORIES, and we do something fancy and cohesive across the spines of the series, and HMH loved the idea. We wanted to create a boxset that was gorgeous but affordable. And we wanted the books to stand alone as well. I love what we pulled off. Hopefully when they come out in October, anybody who wants a boxset will be able to get one.

To see the art, head over to Tor.com and check out the announcement.

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The Dystopia Triptych

It’s here! It’s real! The latest release from John Joseph Adams, Christie Yant, and myself!

I present to you, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, BURN THE ASHES, and OR ELSE THE LIGHT. Otherwise known as THE DYSTOPIA TRIPTYCH!

Six or so years ago, JJA and I edited and released The Apocalypse Triptych, a series of three anthologies that allowed authors to tell connected stories about the end of the world. We had so much fun with those books that we decided to do it again, this time with a dystopian flair.

We started working on these books three years ago, and we had no idea that they’d be as topical as they are today. But fear not, for many of these stories bring glimmers of hope along with their warnings of what not to do. I was absolutely floored reading these and attempting to edit them to improve them even one whit. I also labored over my own stories as if I were writing three novels. I poured my heart and soul into these works. I hope you enjoy them.

The titles of the three books were taken from three of literature’s great dystopian classics, and there are brief forwards in each to convey our hope for what these collections may mean to readers. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts; I hope these stories can start some discussions and get us thinking about the present and future in a new light.

One of the things that will stand out about these books is that the cover art is the best on any series of books I’ve ever seen or held in my hands. No joke. No exaggeration. I think they are works of art, and I believe these will be collectors’ items. Get yours early, because the date will be stamped in the back, and you’ll want your hipster cred.

For those who pre-ordered the ebooks, we want to apologize for delivery issues. There was a problem on the Amazon servers that led to some readers getting a placeholder text (it was actually a film/TV pitch I’ve been working on, so congrats to whomever got an early look at that!). We’re sorry you didn’t get the right text on release day, but we’ve been told that the issue has been rectified and the correct ebook is showing up now. Feel free to reach out to me if you were affected, and we’ll make it up to you.

Now, everyone must know by now my love of ebooks, but perhaps this server glitch was a sign, because never before have I felt more enthusiasm for a printed edition. I say this even though we make less money on the print books. I don’t care! You seriously need to see these in person.

Oh, and guess what? The stories inside them rock as well. We have a fantastic lineup of authors packed into these books, writing some of their most creative and inspiring works. Keep in mind that these stories were written at least a year ago. We’ve been working on them for that long. So marvel at how prescient our scribes have been. And enjoy all the following interviews as I delve into each author’s processes and their inspirations.

I hope you enjoy! I hope you spread the word! I hope you leave a review begging us for more so John Joseph, Christie, and I can do this again real soon.

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