3 book recommendations from Eliot Peper
When is a project done? Like really done. Done, done. It's a problem that every writer, artist, and creator struggles with.
An idea strikes from an orthogonal angle. You flesh it out, explore its possibilities, get to work. Eventually the fuzzy front end slides into focus and you grind through the messy middle until you reach the glorious, long-awaited end.
Except that—like any obnoxious inspirational poster will tell you—the end is really just a new beginning. Edits. Notes. Revisions. Feedback. Refinements. Real artists ship, but where exactly do you call a halt? You can't stop until you've made the project the best it can be, but what if the changes you're making threaten what makes it great in the first place?
When is a project done? When you glare at it, and it glares back—proud, unafraid, demanding to face the world on its own terms.
And now, books I love that you might too:
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is a wildly imaginative, masterfully executed adventure following a gang of necromancers and their warrior attendants as they compete to earn the favor of an immortal emperor in a crumbling palace built atop of the ruins of a far-flung planet. This book is dangerously high dose of pure story, and I tore through it with unabashed relish.
New Rules for the New Economy by Kevin Kelly examines how the logic of decentralized networks will change the rules for business, government, media, education, and society. Originally published in 1998, the principles it enumerates hold up astonishingly well. Containing enough big ideas to inspire dozens of TED talks, Kelly will set your mind on fire.
Educated by Tara Westover is a raw, haunting memoir about growing up in a fundamentalist Mormon family, and discovering the world that exists beyond it. Westover distills the story of her extraordinary life into moments so dense with meaning and rich with emotional acuity that you will find yourself gasping for breath as you are borne along in the inexorable current of her prose.
Bonus recommendation: Dormitorium by Geoff Manaugh is a delightfully creepy speculative short story that explores the liminal space between dreamscapes and cityscapes.
In other news:
To write a novel: "To write a novel is to spin up a black hole that sucks in your fears, hopes, dreams, fascinations, doubts, ideas, speculations, and memories until it collapses into itself under its own weight. And there, in the dying light of fading plasma jets, sits a manuscript."
PSA for writers, artists and entrepreneurs: "Nobody knows what they're doing. Not even the 'successful' people whose work you admire. Everyone is making it up along the way. You can too."
Kevin Kelly on how technology creates opportunity: "Oil paint, keyboard, opera, pen—all these opportunities remain. But in addition we have added film, metal work, skyscrapers, hypertext, and holograms as but a few of the new opportunities for artistic expression. Each year we add more opportunities of every stripe. Ways to see. Methods for thinking. Means of amusing. Paths to health. Routes to understanding."
My conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Moon: "You have to concoct a meaning out of it all, and one good meaning is to be passing things along the generations, with the idea that you’ve done your part in your life, in terms of the longer species life."
On writing the Analog series: "Analog is the negative space that illustrates how deeply ingrained the feed is for the cast. Only in its absence can we observe the extent to which it shapes their lives. Some of them develop a taste for the novelty of disconnection, but just like silent meditation retreats today, the skyrocketing popularity of unplugging illustrates how plugged in we really are."
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 globe-trotting, near-future thriller brimming with intrigue and big ideas.”
-David Brin, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Award–winning author, on Breach
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