3 book recommendations for June, 2020
One thing that many people don't realize about publishing is how long it takes for a writer's rough draft to evolve and grow into the book that ultimately hits shelves. This time is filled with furious activity—editorial, design, production, marketing, etc.—but at a certain point there simply isn't much new writing to do. The story is there on the page, it just needs refinement.
As I'm putting the finishing touches on a book that's nearing publication, the seed of a new story is usually already taking root. That's why I had a novel come out May 20th, and proceeded to finish writing the rough draft of a new novel on June 20th. Last week I read through the new rough draft in its entirety for the very first time. It's an odd and revelatory feeling to have been making something bit by bit over the course of many months, and then inhale the whole thing in one sitting—new facets, echoes, and questions emerge. The experience sparked the realization that ultimately all of my books are about brilliant, flawed, beautiful people discovering what it takes to do the impossible.
It'll be quite a while before this rough draft makes its way through the publishing process and into your hands. In the meantime, go read Veil. It's my best work yet.
And now, books I love that you might too:
Austral by Paul McAuley is a gorgeous, haunting novel—brimming with fractal stories-within-stories—about a fugitive on the run through the backcountry of the new nation established on a greening Antarctica. McAuley's unskimmably precise prose conjure the bleak beauty of the internal and external landscapes the protagonist navigates as she tries to find her way in a world where humanity has become the primary agent of change—the biosphere increasingly subject to the vicissitudes of human nature. See my conversation with McAuley about what inspired the book and how he wrote it.
The Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner is a collection of the diaries Mechner kept as he was developing the computer game that would go on to become a mega-hit. Wonderfully candid, occasionally cringe-worthy, and packed with creative insight, his journals are so fun and illuminating in no small part because they are not a memoir written after the fact, but contemporaneous, fractional glimpses into the mess of a life spent making great things.
The Truth by Terry Pratchett is a witty, freewheeling adventure that follows the launch of a newspaper in Pratchett's richly imagined fantasy metropolis, Ankh-Morpork. A brilliant work of satire, this novel does a better job distilling the social, political, psychological, and technological forces shaping media and extrapolating their consequences than any explicit analysis I've ever read.
Bonus recommendation: There is a very short list of writers I will read no matter what they tackle—and Ada Palmer is one of them. Her novels and blog are spectacularly interesting, and this essay reframes everything from the Black Death to the very idea of progress.
In other news:
My blog hit 500k lifetime views this month—teeny tiny by internet standards, but so much more than I ever expected when I started publishing it. Build your own platform, share your best stories and ideas, and you never know what it might lead to.
Don't forget to feed your soul: "In times like these, while it's crucial to stay informed, I often lose myself in the news cycle—emerging horrified, furious, and drained. It helps to complement with people, music, and stories that feed my soul, that give me energy for the thing that really matters: action."
As I get older I am less and less impressed by cleverness and more and more impressed by sincerity.
If you enjoy Veil, you'll love these books.
Marija Gavrilov interviewed me about imagining the future: "I wrote Veil to be a hopeful book, but I didn't do that by making its future pretty. I did it by making its future reflect how I experience the present, with beauty and pain woven through the whole thing and most people just trying to do their best most of the time."
Paul McAuley on writing Austral: "I’m interested in the way some stories persist; why they continue to be relevant. The deep human patterns that they contain."
How to kill a dragon: "If you run away they get bigger and bigger and you'll never escape. But if you charge forward and face them down they get smaller and smaller until they disappear."
Line from my work-in-progress: "People seeking the meaning of life got it backward. You didn’t ask life for an answer. Life asked you."
Eric Holthaus, climate correspondent for The Correspondent, on Veil: "A wild ride through the Anthropocene, a near-future where geoengineering and climate grief clash head-on, and help unveil a path for meaning in our rapidly changing world. You're going to love this book."
I answered a bunch of your questions about writing, reading, publishing, and creative process over on Goodreads.
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, Ars Technica, and the BBC. 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 Veil, Breach, Borderless, Bandwidth, Cumulus, Neon Fever Dream, True Blue, and the Uncommon Series. Subscribe to his blog here.
"Peper delivers his best novel yet. Veil is filled with diverse characters, complicated relationships, and ethical dilemmas that are sure to spark late night debates."
-The Geekiverse on Veil
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