Charlie's Diary

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Sun, 05 Dec 2004 Head, meet brick wall. Brick wall, meet head So in between dying of bronchitis, going to too many SF cons, and having to wade through a sea of copy edits, I've been grappling with the second draft of GLASSHOUSE. GLASSHOUSE is the SF novel due for publication after ACCELERANDO, i.e. in July 2006. I've got until July '05 to knock it into shape before my editors pick up the cudgels and come looking for me. As I wrote the entire first draft of it back in March-April '03 -- since which time it's been sitting on the shelf -- you might conclude that I've got plenty of time. And in principle, you'd be right. Here's the problem: GLASSHOUSE was a neat little ideas-novel, written in a blinding hurry. I ran out of energy towards the end and the ending sucks, so I knew all along that I needed to go back, hack off the last chapter, and re-write it. The problem is, now that I've polished my way through all of it except the last chapter (which I'm not polishing if I'm about to take an axe to it) I'm not so sure. It's not that the last chapter doesn't need chopping off and re-doing; it's that the book then seems to be demanding an extra 50% bolting on the end. And this is in turn raising the worrisome realization that I'm not quite sure what the book is trying to say. Not that there isn't a plot, or gazillions of ideas, or action, or characterization, or anything like that ... but at a certain point in a novel, you need to be able to say "it's about X", where X isn't a simplistic description of the contents but a thematic description. (For example, Lord of the Flies would be summed up as: "an illustration of the fragility of human societies", not as "a bunch of schoolboys are stranded on a desert island and have lots of increasingly violent adventures ...") And, funnily enough, the overall story arc of a novel tends to contribute to the novel's theme. Which is where I'm having a problem with GLASSHOUSE. Frankly, it's got half a dozen different candidates for the role of thematic core, and I can't choose which possible ending to write until I've forced myself to decide what the book's going to say. Without giving too much away, I shovelled in a kitchen sink's fill of ideas into this story; it's the novel after ACCELERANDO, and when I was writing it I had a horrible feeling it was going to get characterised as a mere warm-up exercise by the reviewers if I didn't make it dense. Now it's so pregnant with signifiers that working out which is the most important message is proving unexpectedly difficult. Ouch. (I'll get there in the end ... it's just looking as if the polishing will take four times as long as the first draft.) [Discuss writing] posted at: 22:08 | path: /writing | permanent link to this entry End of an era Just over 22 years ago, IBM invented the personal computer as we know it. Yes, business microcomputers (not to mention home computers) predated IBM's belated entry into the sector, but the IBM PC did more than just grab a huge share of the market and establish a de-facto hardware standard; it legitimized those small beige buzzing machines in the eyes of businesses and institutions that had hitherto considered personal computing to be unworthy of interest. Well, it looks like the era is over. IBM is selling its PC division according to various reports. Here's the rub; IBM is, and has for almost eighty years, been a service company. They make money by solving problems, not by selling tools. The diversion into the PC making business was a weird aberation in IBM's corporate history, symptomatic of a paradigm shift in the way computing technology was developing: while making PCs was seen as an irritating side-line (IBM originally only expected to sell 50,000 or so of the things -- they sold more than a thousand times that number), by 1982 it was so clearly the coming thing that IBM couldn't afford not to at least look as if they were interested in the idea. I think the significance of IBM selling its PC business is hard to underestimate. It means that the revolution has run its course; the PC has become commodified, certainly, and the profit margins have been shaved razor-thin, but more fundamentally the whole process of managing data in business has become smeared out in such a way that computers are only part of the picture. IBM doesn't manufacture filing cabinets, desk lamps, and other office equipment: IBM getting out of the PC business implies that PCs are now no longer part of the IT services sector but something that can be taken for granted, like the availability of electricity and photocopiers, in any office environment. The revolution has run its course. Whatever happens next (and this by no means implies that personal computers will stop evolving), it won't be driven by the same inexorable shift towards office automation that turned the 80's and 90's into a red queen's race for so many businesses. [Link] [Discuss geekery] posted at: 00:02 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entry

specials: Is SF About to Go Blind? -- Popular Science article by Greg Mone Unwirer -- an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction Inside the MIT Media Lab -- what it's like to spend a a day wandering around the Media Lab "Nothing like this will be built again" -- inside a nuclear reactor complex Quick links: RSS Feed (Moved!) Who am I? Contact me Buy my books: (FAQ) Missile Gap Via Subterranean Press (US HC -- due Jan, 2007) The Jennifer Morgue Via Golden Gryphon (US HC -- due Nov, 2006) Glasshouse Via Amazon.com (US HC -- due June 30, 2006) The Clan Corporate Via Amazon.com (US HC -- out now) Accelerando Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB -- due June 27, 2006) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Free download The Hidden Family Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) The Family Trade Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Iron Sunrise Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) The Atrocity Archives Via Amazon.com (Trade PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (Trade PB) Via Golden Gryphon (HC) Via Amazon.com (HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (HC) Singularity Sky Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.com (US ebook) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Toast Via Amazon.com Via Amazon.co.uk Some webby stuff I'm reading: [ Engadget ] [ Gizmodo ] [ The Memory Hole ] [ Boing!Boing! ] [ Futurismic ] [ Walter Jon Williams ] [ Making Light (TNH) ] [ Crooked Timber ] [ Junius (Chris Bertram) ] [ Baghdad Burning (Riverbend) ] [ Bruce Sterling ] [ Ian McDonald ] [ Amygdala (Gary Farber) ] [ Cyborg Democracy ] [ Body and Soul (Jeanne d'Arc)  ] [ Atrios ] [ The Sideshow (Avedon Carol) ] [ This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow) ] [ Jesus's General ] [ Mick Farren ] [ Early days of a Better Nation (Ken MacLeod) ] [ Respectful of Otters (Rivka) ] [ Tangent Online ] [ Grouse Today ] [ Hacktivismo ] [ Terra Nova ] [ Whatever (John Scalzi) ] [ GNXP ] [ Justine Larbalestier ] [ Yankee Fog ] [ The Law west of Ealing Broadway ] [ Cough the Lot ] [ The Yorkshire Ranter ] [ Newshog ] [ Kung Fu Monkey ] [ S1ngularity ] [ Pagan Prattle ] [ Gwyneth Jones ] [ Calpundit ] [ Lenin's Tomb ] [ Progressive Gold ] [ Kathryn Cramer ] [ Halfway down the Danube ] [ Fistful of Euros ] [ Orcinus ] [ Shrillblog ] [ Steve Gilliard ] [ Frankenstein Journal (Chris Lawson) ] [ The Panda's Thumb ] [ Martin Wisse ] [ Kuro5hin ] [ Advogato ] [ Talking Points Memo ] [ The Register ] [ Cryptome ] [ Juan Cole: Informed comment ] [ Global Guerillas (John Robb) ] [ Shadow of the Hegemon (Demosthenes) ] [ Simon Bisson's Journal ] [ Max Sawicky's weblog ] [ Guy Kewney's mobile campaign ] [ Hitherby Dragons ] [ Counterspin Central ] [ MetaFilter ] [ NTKnow ] [ Encyclopaedia Astronautica ] [ Fafblog ] [ BBC News (Scotland) ] [ Pravda ] [ Meerkat open wire service ] [ Warren Ellis ] [ Brad DeLong ] [ Hullabaloo (Digby) ] [ Jeff Vail ] [ The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) ] [ Groupthink Central (Yuval Rubinstein) ] [ Unmedia (Aziz Poonawalla) ] [ Rebecca's Pocket (Rebecca Blood) ] Older stuff: June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 (I screwed the pooch in respect of the blosxom entry datestamps on March 28th, 2002, so everything before then shows up as being from the same time)

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