Hey Friends! How’d you like to support a struggling genius AND get a great deal on an excellent book (or two)? Today and tomorrow I’m offering my astounding novels at astounding discounts. If you dig Wetmachine, now would be a good time to show it, for once again the wolves are at the door. And if you just dig a good price on a good book, that works too.
The books in question are my Acts of the Apostles, a well regarded nanotech thriller, ostensibly about Gulf War Syndrome, which I wrote between 1995 and 1999 and published in 1999. Normally this goes for $15, but how does $5 sound, including shipping in North America? I’m offering the same deal on my Cheap Complex Devices and pre-orders of The Pains.
And of course, donations in support of the site (or any individual blogger: Me, Harold, Gary or Howard) are also always welcome.
Below the fold, more about these wonderful books, along with simple instructions for cashing in on these great, nay, scandalously great, deals.
About Acts of the Apostles
It’s a geekoid technoparnoid thriller about nanomachines, neurobiology, and a Silicon Valley Messiah. The plot involves an investigation into the causes of Gulf War Syndrome, bad things that happen to people who investigate it, and a nasty conspiracy to send the US Army back to Iraq.
Andrew Leonard in Salon gave it a nice write up. Hemos of the premiere geek site Slashdot said it was what Tom Clancy would write if he were smart. The propeller-heads at Geek.com raved over it. Rusty Foster, original creator of the Scoop software that powers Kuro5hin and Daily Kos said Acts of the Apostles may well be the ultimate hacker book. The molecular biolgists at Bioinformatics.org said “Sundman not only gets it, he gets it right.”
More about the wonderfulness of this brainchild of mine can be found elsewhere on the net.
The book is indeed self-published, but it does not suck. In fact it won the Writer’s Digest’s National Self-Published Book Award, beating out 322 other entrants in the competition.
Much of what I predicted about the “biodigital convergence” is becoming true. But the eeriest thing is that in “Acts” I conjectured that the USA would be tricked into sending its armed forces back to Iraq to finish the job left undone in the first Gulf War, and that the army would be enveloped. I hope I’m not proved entirely right about that part.
About Cheap Complex Devices
This is a post-moderny thing aimed for those of you with a taste in abstruse wacky stuff. Among other things it’s a lampoon of the discipline of artificial intelligence, a meditation on compiler theory and human memory, and a sort of twisted commentary on Acts of the Apostles that one wag described as “Goedell Escher Bach as told by Hunter Thompson on acid.” Rusty loved it, as did Hemos. You can see what some people have to say at Amazon. Again, Google is your friend. There are lots of reviews out there on the net.
About The Pains
Well, this work-in-progress is late, about a year late according my projected schedule, but I’ve nearly finished it and expect to have printed copies available in about two months. You can check out the first two chapters here.
Try before you buy
I assert that my books are great, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Electronic versions of my books are offered for free, under the Creative Commons license.
Why I’m doing this
To quote Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, (da Woofa-goofa wit da green teeth), This is a song about desperation. Every now and then we do get desperate. I have about 350 copies of Acts left from my original printing. They’re just sitting in my storage shed taking up space, selling at the rate of about ten per month (when I used to sell hundreds per month) and meanwhile I’m in a financial jam. As R. Crumb once said on another topic, “these things happen.” So, the shameless entrepreneur in me (aka Paddy One Tune) decided to throw himself at the mercy of teh intarweb.
Even more about me and my writing
In addition to my books, I’ve also written a few things here and there, most prominently at Salon.
How I Destroyed the New Economy is about the year and a half I spent as a construction laborer on the apparently cursed house of a one-time Internet billionaire. How I Decoded the Human Genome is about my investigations into moral and political questions raised by the Human Genome Project. And Artificial Stupidity is about wacky goings-on in the land of the Turing Test.
How to get the super-special mark-down price
To get this super-duper price, you have to buy the books today or tomorrow, and you have to use paypal.
To the left side of the screen you’ll see a paypal button that says “give me money.” Use that to “support a stuggling genius”. Send $5 per book, and when prompted for a comment, tell me what you want and where you live. Send questions to “mail” at “wetmachine”. You can use the same mechanism, of course, to simply make donations in support of the site.
Full price also works!
If buying at marked down prices in fire-sale situations makes you feel icky, please feel free to pay full price by following the simple links on the left of the screen.
Anyone reading this, do it! Do it! Seriously. If I had $10 to my name right now, I’d do it. And I already own the books. I’d give them as gifts to a friend or something.
P.S. Ask nice, and Johnny will autograph them for you (or for whomever you plan to give them to). ‘Cos he’s a cool guy like that.
I’ll second the recommendation for John’s works. I loved Acts of the Apostles.
I’ll third the recommendation. Especially for Cheap Complex Devices, with its absolutely smashingly designed cover, and clever typography.
Hey, John, I’ve come up with a really clever marketing plan… we can get boxes of your books and attach them to bridges around town…
Thanks to all for the kind endorsements. Especially to Gary. You have such a good eye for quality. I shall pass on your compliments to my book designer and cover illustrator.