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

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
August 11, 2003. Version 6 is a Go!
So I made a nice version 5, and today Brockman’s assistant Russell Weinberger
called and said they liked it fine, modulo two changes, drop the too-slobbering second
paragraph from the start of the proposal, and go back to an earlier title.
I had made the title Seashell Soul: Enjoying the Computational Worldview, and they
had me roll it back to The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul with no subtitle. They thought
Enjoying the Computational Worldview sounded “too geeky.”
So I made those two small changes to have a Version 6, and now we’ll see what
happens next. I wonder if they can really get me a large advance. If so, I think I’d be pretty
stoked to write the book. I guess I could start on it pretty soon. Maybe I’ll begin by thinking
about the history of computation once again, but this time without focusing on machines,
allow things like canals to be computations as well.
August 19, 2003. Meeting Brockman in NYC
I met John Brockman, his son Max, and Russell Weinberger for lunch in NYC on
August 19. Brockman turns out to be older than I’d expected. But, duh, he’s my age. A
lively character, certainly, and I found it easy to talk with him. And he seemed to enjoy me.
He sent the proposal to about ten good houses, all at once, and seemed fairly
confident that one of them would give us a good advance. “I wouldn’t be having lunch with
you if I didn’t think that,” he said. “Max is expensive.” His office was impressive, a
penthouse in a building on Fifth Avenue across from the Plaza Hotel.
He did send it to Four Walls Eight Windows, kind of an ace in the hole.
Simon and Schuster has already turned my proposal down. John didn’t think we’d
get any action till September, when everyone’s back from vacation.
September 4, 2003. History of Technology as History of Computation
Now I’m back to teaching at SJSU.
While I’m waiting to hear what the publishers say, I started working on the nine
between-chapters short-short stories I wanted to put in the book. I finished the first one,
“The Kind Rain,” and am starting on the second. The first was a thousand words, which
seems just about perfect. Even if the book doesn’t fly, I can use the stories somewhere.
I need something to write in any case, with the Frek revisions all done. I feel like I’m
wasting my life if I’m just teaching and not writing. I always find it hard to start a fresh
story, much harder than having a novel to keep working on, so in a way it’s good to have the
discipline of trying to write nine one-week stories in a row (optimistically assuming I can do
one a week). Maybe to finally get the knack of the short-short story form. I always used to
love Frederick Brown’s short-short SF stories.
I’ve been reading a lot, too, boning up on computation stuff. I printed out three or
four papers by David Deutsch and some other quantum computation characters. He seems
less and less sanguine about large quantum computers being physically feasible, let alone
human brains actually being quantum computers. I’m thinking I might after all do a limited
modified stations-of-the-cross thing [cf. the Nixon White House Haldeman-Erlichmann
conversation about considering a “limited modified hang out” on Watergate rather than a full
“let it all hang out” (glorious Seventies expression, that)], like talk to Bennett, Toffoli,
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