From: mike99 (mike99@lascruces.com)
Date: Sun Mar 10 2002 - 19:57:08 MST
Speaking of Vernor Vinge, I've just placed an order for Vinge's new revised
and expanded book "True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier"
that includes essays by various authors in addition to Vinge's classic
novella of the title. The book missed its original publication deadline by
about a year. I wonder if this is one of the "other projects" he was
referring to, Damien.
I also understand why you wanted to avoid going with an academic press.
American chain bookstores are now owned by conglomerates, not the old-line
people who loved books, and stores like Waldenbooks refuse to stock or even
special-order any titles from academic presses. At least there is
Amazon.com, which is the salvation of book-lovers such as myself who live in
small cities in remote parts of North America.
Mike LaTorra
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sl4@sysopmind.com [mailto:owner-sl4@sysopmind.com]On Behalf
Of Damien Broderick
Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2002 6:00 PM
To: sl4@sysopmind.com
Subject: Re: Wednesday's chatlog
At 10:56 AM 3/10/02 -0800, Evan Reese wrote:
>Since the term 'singularity' was already in circulation, I
>don't understand why Damien just didn't call the book 'The Singularity'.
Partly out of deference to Vernor Vinge, since I thought he might wish to
write the definitive scholarly book on his construct and I didn't wish to
steal the obvious title out from under him. Since then I've suggested to
him an anthology of the most important papers on the topic, under that
title, but Vernor wasn't interested, explaining that he had too many other
pressing projects. Maybe I'll do it myself if someone doesn't beat me to
it. (You can't imagine how difficult it is to sell this sort of marginal
thing from distant Oz; even with email, you might as well be on Pluto as
far as most US publishers are concerned. I could sell it to an academic
press *in Australia*, but then that tends to kill it for outside Oz, and
the American book distribution system is curiously resistant to handling
books sourced from elsewhere.)
Damien Broderick
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