Introducing Read-Along!
Welcome to the November issue of Hacker Chronicles!
Fall is upon the northern hemisphere, and before we know it, we'll celebrate Thanksgiving.
I'm trying to pitch Swedish friends on the idea of Thanksgiving. November is pretty dull in Sweden — no holidays, lots of darkness, and often not cold enough for snow. Then in December, the country bursts into holiday mode with Advent celebrations four weekends in a row, Saint Lucy's Day, three days of Christmas, and New Year's. They've even adopted Black Friday, but not Thanksgiving. It really should be the other way around!
November is traditionally the month of NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. But NaNoWriMo the organization shut down earlier this year, as I wrote about in the April issue.
There are people trying to restart it. The main effort seems to be NaNo 2.0 at nano2.org. It's lead by a group of longtime NaNoWriMo volunteers and the NaNoWriMo founder himself, Chris Baty. But there are others still upset with how the original NaNoWriMo floundered and failed. They appear to be organizing under nanowrimo2.com.
Either way, I hope you try writing in November if it's a goal of yours!
This month's newsletter feature is light because it just launches a new thing that I've been mulling for months – hacker fiction read-along. We'll read a classic cyberpunk novel together and I'll review it here as we go. The first one is on Time magazine's All-Time 100 Novels list. Can you guess which one it is? Full details below.
Writing Update
I received the final re-recorded chapters of Submerged back for review just this week. So the audiobook version should be coming up.
In a couple of weeks, I'm heading out on an exciting research trip for both my upcoming novel Yield and books beyond that. I'll tell you about it in the December issue and share some photos.
Speaking of Yield, I've had some good writing sessions and I'm holding on to the plan of writing it out-of-order. I've been working on an important scene in Taipei, which I researched by renting an Airbnb there. It's such a joy writing scenes I can draw from personal experiences for.
Here's where my writing is currently at:
November Feature: Introducing Read-Along
For years I've been thinking about how to review the most seminal novels in the genre of cyberpunk. As you know, my reviews are deep dives into the hacking elements. Doing that for a full-length novel is just too much for a single newsletter issue.
I also want you to enjoy the deep dives with the books fresh in mind. Many of us read classics like Snow Crash and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep years, possibly decades ago.
Finally, a solution came to me. We'll (re-)read a book together over the course of a few months and I'll split the review into parts.
Don't worry, these read-alongs will not take over the newsletter. Once we're done with a book, I'll go back to other topics for a while.
The First Read-Along: Neuromancer
The Collector's Edition of the book that John owns.
I'm sure several of you have already read Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson. Many consider it the cyberpunk novel, and for good reason. Wikipedia summarizes its accolades like this:
It remains the first and only novel to win all three of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Philip K. Dick Award. It has been regarded as a classic work of the cyberpunk genre and, in 2005, was named one of Time's All-Time 100 Novels.
So we'll start there. I've only read it from start to finish in Swedish translation, so it'll be my first time in English. But I do know the book has beautiful English because I've listened to a third of it as an audiobook.
How We'll Do It
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to …
Acquire a copy of Neuromancer through a library, used bookstore, online retailer, audiobook platform — whatever works best. Here are some links to the book on various services, for your convenience:
Then read it at the following pace, or faster:
- November: Part 1 “Chiba City Blues.” Chapters 1–4. We'll start easy, just 30 pages in total in my hardcover copy.
- December: Part 2 “The Shopping Expedition” and Part 3 “Midnight in the Rue Jules Verne.” Chapters 5–12, 96 pages.
- January: Part 4 “The Straylight Run” and the "Coda: Departure and Arrival." Chapters 13–24, 94 pages.
I will review “Chiba City Blues” in the December issue, “The Shopping Expedition” and “Midnight in the Rue Jules Verne” in the January issue, and “The Straylight Run” and "Coda: Departure and Arrival" in the February issue.
This will be fun and rewarding!
Currently Reading
While I was waiting for Ed McBain's first 87th Precinct police procedural, Cop Hater (1956) to arrive at my home, I picked up The Matarese Circle (1979) by Robert Ludlum. It's a 600-page Cold War spy thriller. It got a sequel almost twenty years later in The Matarese Countdown.
