Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
thinks he’d be interested in a non-SF novel. I’ll probably go back to my usual agent after this
one.
I certainly do want to write SF novels again. Well, it's always just one book at a time,
anyway, isn’t it.
He doesn’t like the July 17, 2003, version of the proposal, but thinks I can get there.
Says it needs to be — unpacked.
He didn’t like Computation and Reality as a book title, said the publishers think
computers are dead, what with the dot com bubble burst. Said he’s just failed to sell a book
of essays (edited by him) called something like A New Humanism, about the theme that
everything is about computers these days.
Most of his book title examples had colons in them, like Einstein’s Space and Van
Gogh’s Sky: The Blahblah of Whatever. I’d like to get away without a colon.
Didn’t like the chapter titles, “Our Electronic Servants,” “The Web of Knowledge,”
or “Consciousness.” Used the phrase “shopworn.”
He said, get this, “You’re in California — score some dope and go crazy with it.
Take the readers on a trip. A ride.” “I can’t get dope,” I said. “I don’t mean it literally,” he
backpedals. “Make the book fun, exciting, take people to a new place. Make it trippy.”
He didn’t like the Preface draft getting into Reality and :the world, society, and the
mind. Too familiar-sounding.
So I rewrote it and changed the title to The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul.
This is all very welcome. Instead of, “Rudy, I don’t think people are buying this kind
of book anymore. Why don’t you do a book like that book about longitude?”
July 31, 2003. Brockman Pushing Me
So Brockman liked the second version of the proposal, said I’d convinced him,
wanted just some little tweaks, said we were almost done.
Said he doesn’t want me to mention my SF career very much, in fact every time I talk
to him, he dumps on SF, which is of course tedious for me, having to be polite in the face of
that kind of snobbism. “Marvin Minsky writes SF,” he tells me, “but we don’t talk about that
to the nonfiction editors.” Rrright.
The assistant Fed-Exes me three samples of successful proposals, which are sort of
helpful, and sort of not. More and more I begin to feel that I have nothing new to say. I skim
them quick, then send a tougher, weirder Version 4 proposal, something closer to what I
really want to do, punker and using more made-up SF words, more in your face. Maybe
that’s good, maybe the more they needle me the better the proposal gets, the closer it gets to
being the real me. Or maybe the proposal is now just fully beyond the pale.
At moments I think maybe I really don’t have anything commercially interesting to
say. I’d hoped he’d call back today, but now it’s too late, and I’m going camping with Jon
Pearce tomorrow, so I won’t hear anything till Monday. So all weekend I can imagine the
situation is hopeless. Why do I get into these things?
August 4, 2003. Openers.
Still no word on proposal Version 4. My mind turns to plans for Version 5.
How about break each chapter into (a) self-aggrandizing name-dropping
reminiscence, (b) quick factual survey, (c) how this affects your mind and your life in your
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