Category: Books

Memories of the Future got :

There’s one thing that Wil Wheaton wants to make very clear: “Memories of the Future” is not, repeat, NOT a “tell-all” book about his time working on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“It was extraordinarily important to me that this was not some kind of stupid, gossipy book,” Wheaton said. “I despise that kind of thing. I just hate it. It’s the reality television of literature, and I absolutely cannot stand it.”

Indeed, “Memories of the Future” is instead a funny review of, and a loving tribute to, the first season of “Next Generation,” which began its television run in 1987.

I also saw that Happiest Days of Our Lives was used as an example of one of those new-fangled paper-style books:

Today I picked up a paper book to read just for fun — The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton. Long-time (since this spring!) Kindle user that I am, I immediately noticed the dashing use of color on its front cover, but when I opened it, I was disappointed that I couldn’t scale the font size down from the default. It seems that paper books have only one font option — what are all these Kindle forum posters complaining about with its six sizes of a single font?

On the very first page, I encountered a word I wasn’t familiar with (Namaste). I thought I knew what it meant from the context clues, and even had the thought that on the Kindle, I could just highlight it and confirm my guess. But my paper dictionary was in the basement, so I didn’t bother looking it up until I wrote this post. (My hunch was reasonably correct.)

Interface-wise, the paper book is solid, and crashes, lockups, or other malfunctions are rare. I have, however, noted severe stability problems when attempting to read outdoors, especially when it’s windy (which, since I live in Kansas, is pretty much always). Pages start turning themselves, even without me making the “turn page” gesture. Sometimes the book will even lose its memory of my last page read. This is rather annoying, and might even involve a lengthy search for a suitable temporary replacement bookmark. Also, I haven’t tried it, but I suspect that the trick of putting a Kindle in a ziplock bag to read at the beach or in the tub without risk of getting it wet would be impractical with a paper book.

That entire post is really funny and clever, and I think you should read the whole thing. Go ahead, I'll wait.

See? Wasn't it funny? I like clever writing that is funny.

Speaking of The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, I know a non-zero number of people have been waiting very patiently for the special edition to be released by Subterranean Press. I wanted to explain, again, why it's been a year: After the book was announced, I spent almost two months digging through published and unpublished material for the expanded parts of the book, then I spent another month or so rewriting and polishing the stuff that made the cut. After that, I wrote additional introductions and notes to go with each chapter. That was the first delay (and, honestly, I thought it was entirely reasonable, since the book was announced as a pre-order) The biggest delay, and the first serious problem, though, was a software compatibility issue between me and the copy editor. OpenOffice and Word don't track notes the same way, but neither of us knew this until we'd both spent a lot of time working in our respective suites, completely oblivious to the work of the other. Finally, we realized what was wrong, and had to go all the way back to the beginning of the copy editing process the old way, printing the entire manuscript out on paper and making notes in the margins. It had a certain nostalgic value, but it took forever to get all that shit straightened out. 

So that process, which should have taken a couple weeks, took close to three months. Then, once we got that all squared away, I had to get a bunch of pictures together, caption them, fact-check the captions with my parents and siblings, then get all that stuff to Subterranean Press. I also held up this part of the process for a couple more weeks while I looked for even more unpublished pictures that neither me nor my mom could find. 

Finally, I asked my son Ryan (who is a creative writing student) if he wanted to write an afterword. He said he would, but it would take some time because he's in college and has his own responsibilities. I was willing to wait, because I thought it would be awesome to have his contribution to in the book, and I figured at this point (August) another couple weeks didn't make that big a difference. It ended up taking about 6 or 8 weeks, but I think it will ultimately be worth the delay (please note that I am not an objective source of information in this regard.)

Finally, the manuscript was turned in, the pictures were approved, the layout was all set … and then the signature pages arrived. I had to sign something like 2500 pages, and it was important to me that each one looked like it was the only one I'd signed. I could have blown through it, of course, and gotten it done in a couple of days, but that would have guaranteed disappointment to everyone who bought the book and waited almost a year to get it. So I limited myself to between 50 and 75 pages at a "session," and it took several weeks to work my way through them all.

Oh, also, keep in mind that during all of these months, I was working on other projects, including several television shows that took me away from the Happiest Days project for weeks at a time.

So all of those delays stacked up on top of each other, until everything was finally finished about six or eight weeks ago. I realize that this is a very long time to wait for something, and I also realize that I've probably killed any chance of doing other special editions with Subterranean Press because this one took so long, but I sincerely believe that it will be worth the wait, because I've seen it, and it's something very special.

Catching up on my RSS subscriptions earlier today, I saw this at Boingboing:

JC Hutchins — he of the boundless energy! — has assembled a free "holiday sampler" of excerpts from great new books, handily bundled together in a handsome PDF, well suited to loading onto your device or printing out for your Xmas holiday.

Some of my favorite authors are in this compliation, including my friend Cherie Priest, Scott Sigler, Cory Doctorow, and of course JC himself. Seth Godin (whose Purple Cow
helped form the foundation of my little self-publishing thing, which has grown into what I've recently begun half-jokingly calling "Wil Wheaton, Incorporated" with some of my friends) included an excerpt from Tribes, (plus something from a forthcoming book called Linchpin), and I can't wait to read the other authors I probably wouldn't have come across entirely on my own.

This is such an incredibly good idea, and I salute the authors who were smart enough to include some of their work in it. I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, I wish I'd thought of this, or at least written something worthy of inclusion (he says, as an unfulfilled goal for 2009 is reborn for 2010.) They have even included links right in the pdf that will take you to retailers, should you enjoy one of the excerpts so much, you simply must have a copy of the full work for your very own to love and keep and pet and call George. This. Is. Genius.

If you're interested, head on over to JC Hutchins' site, where you can check out the contents, and grab a copy for yourself or some lucky person you know.