3 book recommendations from Eliot Peper
The Chicago Review of Books interviewed me about the power of digital feeds, the geopolitics of tech, and the future extrapolated in Borderless.
Speaking of the near future, Breach comes out May 14! I can’t wait to hear what you think. Preorder it now.
And now, books I love that you might too:
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells is a nonstop action adventure following a self-deprecating killer robot with severe social anxiety who uncovers a dark secret while on a mission to a remote mining colony. This second entry in the Murderbot Diaries series is exciting, sarcastic, and a hell of a lot of fun.
Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny is a tale of resistance and rebellion set in a future where medicine has extended human lifespans to a few centuries for the privileged few who can afford it. Penny illustrates how such a miraculous innovation could prove socially disastrous by locking in incumbent power structures. The story is packed with thought-provoking speculation, like how long-lived oligarchs would immediately stop greenhouse gas emissions at any cost.
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne follows the odyssey of a British gentleman and his French valet who circumnavigate the globe on a bet. When the book was published in 1873, such a feat was barely believable speculative fiction. The duo travels by steamer, train, sailboat, sled, and elephant as they race against time to win their wager. Reading their story reenforces how dramatically technology has remade the world in the past century and a half.
Bonus recommendation: Ken Davenport, a longtime subscriber to this newsletter, released a new biotech thriller about a terrorist attack using genetically engineered insects.
In other news:
I published a few blog posts: Blogs will rise again, The power of small things, Meg Howrey on the inner lives of astronauts, An excerpt from Cumulus, and The internet is just getting started.
The Bestseller podcast interviewed me about sharing creative work and how to earn an audience.
You know you’re a science fiction writer when your tools start talking to you.
A professor at the University of Washington sent over a paper written by one of her students about Bandwidth and the social implications of tech. It’s great to see speculative fiction included in course curriculums.
The David Pakman Show called out Breach and Infomocracy for extrapolating thought-provoking futures in fiction.
The internet is making me blush by saying really nice things about our True Blue public art project.
Factor Daily referenced an essay of mine in a feature on science fiction prototyping.
ICYMI: Technology, Politics Collide in Eliot Peper’s ‘Borderless’
I just hit 45k words in the rough draft of a new novel.
If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support it, tell your friends. I love sharing amazing stories that explore the intersection of technology and culture. The goal of this newsletter is to recommend books, both fiction and nonfiction, that crackle and fizz with big ideas, keep us turning pages deep into the night, challenge our assumptions, help us find meaning in a changing world, and make us think, feel, and ask hard questions. In an age of digital abundance, quality is the new scarcity. The right book at the right time can change your life.
I also pull back the curtain on my creative process. When I'm not reading books, I'm writing them. If you're interested, you can find my books right here. They've earned praise from the New York Times Book Review, Businessweek, Popular Science, Boing Boing, TechCrunch, io9, and Ars Technica. I'd love to hear what you think if you give them a read.
Cheers, Eliot
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Eliot Peper is the author of Breach, Borderless, Bandwidth, Cumulus, Neon Fever Dream, True Blue, and the Uncommon Series. Subscribe to his blog here.
"A gritty view of the future of economic inequality and surveillance. In a city divided between the haves and have-nots, anonymity is virtually impossible... except for a few insiders who have the power to subvert the system for their own purposes."
-David Brin, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell award-winning author, on Cumulus
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