News January 3, 2013

Pre-Order with Amazon Now, and Get Your Book In . . . 23 Years?

So I like science fiction. I also enjoy stories that take place in really cold places (“Antarctica”, “Kolymsky Heights”, “Archangel”), and I’m also fond of Steampunk, Victoriana, and the Edwardian Era. And the book “Aurorarama” attempts to blend all those elements together, along with a lot of word-play, inside jokes, odd allusions, and (let’s be blunt) tons of drugs. Set in “New Venice”, a city plunked down in the Arctic Circle on Ellesmere Island (I think), it’s a wild ride. With weird prose–the author is a Francophone writing in English, which gives you some pretty weird constructions, to put it mildly. (He also loves the double-negative. Or rather, he doesn’t dislike the double-negative. Ha! See what I did there?)

“Aurorarama” came out a couple of years ago, and I’ve been wondering when we’re going to see the sequel, so I was pleased earlier this year to hear that “Luminous Chaos” was going to be released at the end of October, 2012. Then, alas, it got pushed out. Way out. Way, way, way, way out. Look:

Okay, yeah, Amazon: I’m eager to get my hands on this book, but pre-ordering it 23 years in advance? Seriously? (And it should be “Douglas’”, not “Douglas’s”. No need to repeat the ‘s’.)

Clearly someone somewhere–the publishing house, Amazon, the IT department, who knows–blew it. Or, given the playfulness of the author, maybe it’s Valtat himself. Who knows? All I know is, 2035 is a durn long way away!

Tags: Amazon, Books and eBooks, Offbeat and Off Topic

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About Douglas Moran

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Doug is a nerd from way back, falling for a Commodore PET at the age of 15, and never looking back. Riding the nerd wave, he got a Computer Science degree and entered the tech industry at a young age, deciding after a year and a half of front-line phone technical support that he should try something, *anything* else. He settled on technical writing, and has been cranking out documentation for companies like Unisys, SGI, Cisco, Juniper, and many others ever since. He is nothing short of ecstatic to be working for H-P from his home base in Austin.

http://twitter.com/gorkon Joel McLaughlin

Hmm…..that reader name is set by the automatic naming thing when you setup a Kindle or the cloud reader. So it probably can’t handle when you have an s at the end of your name. EIther way, you can rename your kindles too and I’ve done that as sometimes it will say something like Joel’s 3rd Android Phone when you re-register a device.
- http://twitter.com/gorkon Joel McLaughlin
  
  As for the book…that’s weird. Sounds like a misentry or a bug.
  - http://www.geardiary.com Carly Z
    
    I see it as comfort that Amazon will still be around to deliver the book in 2035.
  - http://www.geardiary.com Carly Z
    
    I see it as comfort that Amazon will still be around to deliver the book in 2035.
    - http://www.geardiary.com Bryan Eley
      
      Clearly they weren’t dissuaded by dire December 21 2012 predictions.
    - http://www.geardiary.com/ Michael Anderson
      
      As opposed to … um, Barnes & Noble?
Doug Miller

An apostrophe and s after a name that ends with an s is not only ok, but many sources list it as preferred usage. I think it’s ok to eliminate it – we certainly speak it that way – but it’s also ok to include it.

It depends on the usage rules that you decide use.

See http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp or http://www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/grinker/LwtaApostrophes.htm
FSkornia

Best explanation that I can think of is that the publisher really has no clue when it will be ready to release. There probably isn’t an option in the system for an undetermined time, so the publishers chose the farthest date the system since they don’t want to start arbitrarily putting in dates and continually changing them. Look at the grief GRR Martin got as he kept saying “Next year” on A Dance With Dragons.
- http://www.geardiary.com Carly Z
  
  Yup. And since you don’t get charged until the preorder ships, preorder numbers will help them figure out how much of a first run to print.