It's been a while since the last mailing. Although there isn't a great deal that's new just at the moment, I thought it was time to put out something to the list, if just to show that it is still active. Have you ever noticed that nothing can happen all week, and then when three things happen they all do so at once? Or that if the phone rings once in a morning with the call you've been waiting for, it will be during the 30 seconds in which you step outside to get something from the car. Last year was a bit like that. In a Murphyesque kind of way, just about everything that could happen to interfere with my writing did happen, culminating with a bout of bronchitis that hit over Christmas (which should teach me not to go around telling everyone in future that I never get sick, but it probably won't). I'm only now just beginning to feel normal again. So it wasn't the most productive of years?but then there has to be a lowest somewhere. On the good side, things seem to be picking up again, and I'm anticipating that this palindromic year of 2002 will be more lively

ORDER CATALOG

In the last letter, September, I described the horror story we experienced in moving the web site to a different host as a prelude to adding a shopping cart and credit-card-processing, which never came remotely close to happening. But I did give the assurance that, not to be deterred, we would be having another crack at it, and accordingly we've been looking at shopping cart software. Some of the things that turned up were truly astounding: systems that would only accept US-formatted addresses?thereby excluding 95% of the world's population; another that adds the shipping cost before any customer data has been entered?assuming US rates, again because it apparently never occurred to the programmer that anyone might want to send anything elsewhere. The upshot is that we're seriously contemplating writing our own. And this seems silly, since the requirement really is absurdly simple. If anyone has any suggestions of available products that seem competently conceived and implemented, by all means let me know. In the newsletter of last July, I rashly predicted that we should see the system up and running in about a month. This time I'm not saying anything.

TITLE NEWS

Releases, October 2001

The Legend That Was Earth -- Earth divided over powerful, self-serving interests that are selling out to exploitative aliens leads to direct conflict against seemingly impossible odds. But there are other ways to win. Baen Books paperback, 503 pp., ISBN 0-671-31840-3 $7.99 U.S. (Original hardback released October, 2000)

Martian Knightlife -- Containing two connected stories featuring Kieran Thane, "The Knight." An intended break for some rest and relaxation on Mars leads to trouble involving a scientist double-crossed by his own alter ego, and the threatened destruction of what might be the most exciting archeological discovery of all time. Baen Books Hardback, 278 pp. ISBN 0-671-31844-6 $22.00 U.S. Reader reactions have been enthusiastic, looking forward to more in the series which it's hoped will follow.

Past Imperfect -- DAW anthology of time travel stories, edited by Martin Greenberg and Larry Segriff, 314 pp., ISBN 0-7564-0012-0 $6.99 U.S. Contains a new short story, "Convolution".

December, 2001

Silicon Dreams -- DAW anthology of robot and Artificial Intelligence stories, edited by Martin Greenberg and Larry Segriff, 319 pp.,
ISBN 0-7564-0018-X $6.99 U.S. Contains a new short story, "Take Two".

RERELEASES

Code of the Lifemaker -- A race of sentient, naturally evolving robots theorize that a godlike intelligence that was not machine must have created the first machine. And then humans show up. Baen Books paperback, scheduled for release March 2002. ISBN 0-7434-3526-5, 471pp. $6.99 U.S. (Original Del Rey hardback, June 1983)

CURRENT PROJECTS

Sequel to Cradle of Saturn. Again, slowed down by my deciding on a full rewrite of the first 100 pages. Now picking up and moving.

Later, in the works: Truth Under Tyranny, nonfiction look at repressive science, that many readers are asking about. Also, a third collection along the lines of Minds, Machines & Evolution, and Rockets, Redheads & Revolution, tentatively to be called, Chaos, Catastrophism, and Convolution. But don't ask me for a date on this one.

For more details of all the above, see the "What's New" page.

CONVENTION APPEARANCES

Yours truly is privileged be Guest of Honor at Willycon, Wayne, Nebraska, April 5-8. Also Special Guest at the Oasis convention, Orlando, Florida, in May 24-26. Again, details on the "What's New" page.

BULLETIN BOARD TOPICS

The BB has suffered too, and I've had a spate of e-mails asking when it will be active again. Well, it is. Recent items posted include:

Weird things that SF writers get asked by readers
The real victims of Chernobyl. Hysteria and bad science killed far more than the accident did.
Economics students protesting against dogmatism divorced from economic reality.

More soon on experiments that contradict Relativity and gravity as a byproduct of the electrical nature of matter.

For Previous Mailings, see the mail archive.

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James P. Hogan

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