I’d seen some intriguing reviews for this book, including a starred review in Publishers Weekly. The premise sounded fascinating: an alien artifact is discovered on the edge of our solar system in the latter years of the 21st century. The spaceship Theseus is sent out to intercept this artifact and see what it’s all about, and the crew is one of the most hodgepodge muddle of critters and characters you could ever want.
A cybernetic biologist, a genetically engineered vampire (that’s right, vampire), a linguist with induced multiple personalities, a mathematical savant who can’t comprehend emotion and intent, and a whole bunch of other strange figures. Together, they have to figure out what this artifact is and what it can do.
A lot of writers have beaten the science fiction trope of “first contact” to death, and so one might think it hard to come up with an original way to approach this kind of story, but it seems Watts has done just that. This seems to be a book where the aliens really are alien, and not just humans in funny costumes, and even the representatives of the human race act extremely outside the bounds of what we might consider human in the first place.
That’s not the best part though. If you go here: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm, you can read the entire thing for free, by way of the Creative Commons licensing. You can read it online, download it as a PDF file, or a few other options. This is a great chance to read a highly praised story without dropping a dime and see if it lives up to its growing reputation. I’m diving into the first chapter, and I’ll be sure to share my thoughts once I’m done. Looking forward to your opinions as well.
I see that smile.
Well, the opening is quite strong, although I can’t stand it when a writer italicises every other word because they think the reader won’t get the importance of the dialogue otherwise.
But the other issue here is unknown writers giving novels away for free. I read somewhere a long time ago that anything free is worth what you pay for it, and while I do accept that it is one way of getting stuff out to a wider audience (although how wide is very debatable), I hope it’s not the way fiction writing in general is going to go. After all, we’ve all got bills to pay!
I hear that guffaw!
I’ve tried to resist italicizing and doing wacky things with my fonts for now.
I was wondering myself why he chose to give Blindsight away for free, and I stumbled across this article on the whole trend that seems to be popping up.
http://communities.canada.com/theprovince/blogs/readthis/pages/brave-new-world-of-free-fiction-full-story.aspx
Part of it looks like because the book debuted to lackluster sales and the publisher had no plans to print any more copies. Then his free distribution efforts boosted him into multiple printings, award nominations (including a Hugo). If that’s not an argument for the pros to free fiction, than I don’t know what is.
So far, I haven’t seen an author being hurt by giving away some of their stuff for free. Brandon Sanderson, a favorite of mine, posted an as-yet-unpublished fantasy novel, Warbreaker, chapter by chapter, and much of his online community appears dedicated to still buying the book in question once it actually becomes available.
Something to ponder.
It is.
Perhaps this is the future for the craft of the storyteller: instead of sending your synopsis and first three chapters to agents, agonise over getting one, then agonise over getting a publisher, then over sales, then over the film right, etc., we’ll all be putting our best work on the web and hoping that enough people notice it, and that one of them is a media mover and shaker.
The medium might change, but for sure the hoping-against-hope won’t..
Hey Josh!
I thought it was time to comment, and to let you know I am a devoted reader of your blog=). I tend to agree with you on giving away things. Since nearly every market is bloated with “new” ideas, products, etc., much of selling comes down to marketing and PR. And there honestly isn’t much better PR than giving something of worth away for free. Radiohead just did it with their new CD (or, rather, choose how much you pay)and I’ve never seen so much mainstream publicity for such a deliberately un-mainstream band. Not only did it continue to cement the relationship with their already devoted fans (many of whom I’m sure still paid), but they widened their audience by a large margin to all of those who either love/hate them or are unfamiliar with them. I think it’s going to be harder to rely on conventional methods to get ideas out there and sometimes taking the risk to give it away has a hugely advantageous reward.
Chris: It’s potential, though I see the approach of giving some fiction away as more of an appeal to the reading audience than something I’d do before actually getting published (though there are certainly stories of people who have found success that way.) And yes, wild and crazy dreams are a must for this biz.
Teegan! Great to see you here. Yeah, the Radiohead giveaway has been garnering some big attention, and I honestly doubt they are suffering at all for their generosity. People can try them out for the first time with zero risk, and their give-the-power-to-the-people approach has probably gained them a lot of loyal listeners, even if they continue to sell through normal channels after this.
Does it have to have a vampire in it? I really, really, really don’t like vampires.
I’ll give it a read, italics and vampires notwithstanding.
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I posted the link to the free read of BLINDSIGHT months ago, when I saw it was nominated for the Hugo. But…never read it. ::shrug::
I’d like to hear what you think of it.
And I’ve heard some arguments both pro and con the free stuff, but like music, it’s going to get easier and easier to get stuff for free to download sans paying. Sadly for those who want to be remunerated, but great for readers.
I wouldn’t mine a system where you pay a monthly fee and go read what you want, sort of like Rhapsody dot com does with music. But I’d want the writers to get paid!
Mir
I’ve read it, enjoyed it overall and have a review that I’ll be posting in a day or two. I’m not sure I’d go out and buy this book for the sake of having it, now that I’ve read it, but I do look forward to seeing what his next story is, and if it looks as promising as this proved to be, I may pick that one off the shelf.
Interesting idea on the pay-per service, especially workable once a common and affordable e-reader comes into play and e-books are more popular. I’m sure we’ll see some sort of system come into being sooner or later that does just what you suggested.