Suleiman the Magnificent, Grand Sultan of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the most powerful ruler in the world, was determined to conquer Europe. Only one thing stood in his way: a dot of an island in the Mediterranean called Malta occupied by the Knights of St. John, the cream of the warriors of the Holy Roman Empire. A clash of civilizations was shaping up the likes of which had not been seen since Persia invaded Greece.

Determined to capture Malta and use its port to launch operations against Europe, Suleiman sent an armada and an overwhelming army in 1565. A few thousand defenders in Fort St. Elmo fought to the last man, enduring unimaginably cruel hardships. When they captured the fort the Turks took no prisoners and mutilated the defenders’ bodies. Seventy year old Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette of the Knights reciprocated by decapitating his Turkish prisoners and using their heads to cannonade the enemy. Then the battle for Malta began in earnest: no quarter asked; none given.

The Siege of Malta was not merely a gripping tale of brutality, courage, and tenacity, but the saga of two mighty civilizations struggling for domination of the known world. In the ebb and flow of the battle on this scrap of land the destiny of Europe teetered in the balance. Though the conflict took place some 450 years ago, it resonates to this very day.

Some years ago, after visiting Malta I came across The Great Siege, Ernle Bradford’s  account of this pivotal event, and it left me stunned. I had never read a more gripping work of military history. When I began inquiring about its status I discovered that it was out of print. A visit to Amazon.com revealed almost universally five-star reviews and numerous pleas for someone to bring it back into print. Now that I was a publisher I asked – why not me? I made some inquiries and located the owners of the rights.

The happy upshot is that E-Reads is thrilled to bring back The Great Siege. Below are excerpts from some of the 21 five-star reviews on Amazon.com, and here is the first chapter.

I know that when you read The Great Siege you’ll share the high opinion of one reader who said “This is truly a great book.”

Richard Curtis

***********************

Stunning read, brilliant story, absolutely compelling!
I just don’t know how this story has escaped the clutches of Hollywood. The Great Siege of Malta has to be one of the most amazing conflicts of military history.
*************
Probably the best book of all time related to the Knights of Saint John and the Ottomans.
*****************
…a cliffhanger up to the last pages
*****************
The siege of Malta is one of those great episodes of history where almost super-human courage and bravery triumph against overwhelming odds.

If you like adventure read this book: besides reading like a fascinating adventure story it happens to describe real-life actual facts. Beats any Hollywood epic, IMHO.
*****************

For anyone who claims history is ‘boring’ this book is the remedy – an absolute page-turning account of a desperate battle. The account, though historically informative, reads like a novel. It is concisely written, expressive, and utterly captivating; I could not put it down.

**********************

This is a truly great book. Mr Bradford is so passionate about his subject, so vivid in his detail, that it’s all you can do not to book a plane ticket to go and see for yourself. The detail is staggering – he recreates the past with the love and care of an artist. It is a book about the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and their struggle against the Turks of the Ottoman empire – and it’s a ripping good read.

**********************

An amazingly heroic defense of the knights and the Maltese against an amazing siege of the navy of the Magnificent and his generals. When I read in my middle school history class, this siege just was an unsuccessful one-sentence event in the hundreds of pages of the Ottoman Empire, but, while reading this book, I felt like I watched and lived the siege minute by minute. And I felt like this was the most important siege of all times (it truly might be!).

*******************

What an epic film this would make as some of the events ring true to this day.
A must read for anyone interested in the advent of gunpowder, heroic and defiant stands, massive battles and some incredible characters like the leader of the knights, La Valette who was seventy years old while leading the defense himself! Most enjoyable book of this nature that I have ever read. Powerful stuff.

Chapter 1

The Sultan of the Ottomans

Soleyman’s titles resounded through the high Council chamber like a roll of drums:

Sultan of the Ottomans, Allah’s deputy on Earth, Lord of the Lords of this World, Possessor of Men’s Necks, King of Believers and Unbelievers, King of Kings, Emperor of the East and West, Emperor of the Chakans of Great Authority, Prince and Lord of the most happy Constellation, Majestic Caesar, Seal of Victory, Refuge of all the People in the whole World, the Shadow of the Almighty dispensing Quiet in the Earth.

His ministers, admirals, and generals prostrated themselves and withdrew. It was the year 1564, and Soleyman the First, Sultan of Turkey, was seventy years old. He had just taken the decision to attack the island of Malta in the spring of the following year.

His had been a life of unparalleled distinction from the moment when he had succeeded his father, Selim, at the age of twenty-six. Known in his own country as the Lawgiver, and throughout Europe as Soleyman the Magnificent, he had truly earned these appellations. He had reformed and improved the government and administration of Turkey, and had made her the greatest military state in the world. He was unequalled as a statesman, and was a poet in his own right.

If the Turkish people for these reasons called him ‘The Lawgiver’, the people of Europe for their part had good reasons for conceding to him the respectful title of ‘The Magnificent’. His conquests alone justified it, and Europeans have always lavished more respect upon conquerors than upon lawgivers. In the course of his Sultanate, Soleyman had added to his dominions, Aden, Algiers, Baghdad, Belgrade, Budapest, Nakshivan, Rhodes, Rivan, Tabriz, and Temesvar. Under him the Ottoman Empire had attained the peak of its glory. His galleys swept the seas from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and his kingdom stretched from Austria to the Persian Gulf, and the shores of the Arabian Sea. Only at the walls of Vienna in 1529 had his armies faltered.

At the age of seventy, with so many resounding triumphs behind him, it might have been expected that the Sultan would wish to take his ease and watch the decline of day over the Golden Horn. But to Soleyman in his old age there remained only the desire for power, the ambition to extend his conquests. Even if he had not been ambitious himself, those who surrounded him would never have allowed him to rest.

‘So long as Malta remains in the hands of the Knights,’ wrote one of his advisers, ‘so long will every relief from Constantinople to Tripoli run the danger of being taken or destroyed…’ ‘This cursed rock,’ wrote another, ‘is like a barrier interposed between us and your possessions. If you will not decide to take it quickly, it will in a short time interrupt all communications between Africa and Asia and the islands of the Archipelago.’

It was forty-two years since Soleyman, in the prime of his life and at the head of a vast fleet and army, had driven the Knights of St John from their island fortress of Rhodes. He had felt for them, then, an unwilling but respectful admiration. Had he not said in the presence of his advisers, ‘It is not without some pain that I oblige this Christian at his age to leave his home’? It was the sight of the seventy-year-old Grand Master, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, preparing to embark with his Knights from the captured island that had prompted this reflection. Now, at the same age himself, the Sultan was less moved by chivalry, and more by a desire for vengeance.

The sandstone rock of Malta had proved an even greater irritant than Rhodes. Rhodes had been so close to the shores of Turkey that, in the last years of their residence there, the Knights’ sallies had been almost neutralized. The movement of the Order’s galleys had been quickly made known to the captains of the Sultan’s warships and merchantmen. Yet, even so, they had still managed to harry the trade of the Levant, and interrupt the shipping between Alexandria and Constantinople. Malta, however, was worse, because it was so far distant from Constantinople that it was less easy to spy upon the Order’s movements. Furthermore, the island’s position in the very heart of the Mediterranean gave it the command of the east–west trade routes. Everything passing through the channel between Sicily, Malta, and North Africa was at the mercy of the Maltese galleys. They let few opportunities slip through their fingers.

To a ruler who had added thousands of square miles to his empire, the possession of an almost barren island might seem unimportant. To a ruler whose daily bread was adulation, who had grown weary of the title, ‘Conqueror of the East and West’, the island and its Knights were an irritation hardly to be borne.

It seemed as if the Knights, like gadflies, were determined to provoke the anger of the lion. Soleyman might mistrust the advice of his ministers. He could hardly, however, ignore the words of the greatest Mohammedan seaman of his time, the corsair Dragut.

Dragut, although a pirate, was allied to the Porte and in recent years had been careful to pay his duties and respects to the Sultan. He was, like Soleyman himself, a fighter and an opportunist. Soleyman heeded him more perhaps than his own Admiral Piali. When Dragut said: ‘Until you have smoked out this nest of vipers you can do no good anywhere,’ the Sultan was prepared to listen.

Recent events had confirmed Dragut’s opinion. When the Spanish Emperor, Philip II, had mounted an armada against the port of Penon de la Gomera, the Knights of Malta had assisted him with their galleys, and had added the weight of their experience, seamanship, and military ability, to the Spanish forces. Penon de la Gomera, which lay on the North African coast due south of Malaga, had long been a favourite port and anchorage for the corsairs of the Barbary coast. Its capture by the Christians was as much a blow to Moslem pride as its economic loss was important. The Knights had successfully attacked one of the Sultan’s ports on the Greek coastline. Ranging south of Malta, they had also captured a number of Turkish merchantmen. Soleyman was reminded that, ‘The island of Malta is swollen with slaves, true believers, and that among the distinguished men and women held there to ransom are the venerable Sanjak of Alexandria, and the old nurse of your daughter Mihrmah.’

Soleyman’s daughter, Mihrmah, was one of the chief advocates of an attack on Malta. The child of his favourite wife, the Russian-born Roxellane, Mihrmah never ceased to remind Soleyman of the account that still had to be settled with the Knights.

The capture of a great merchant ship belonging to Kustir-Aga, chief eunuch of the seraglio of the Sultan, was the ultimate provocation. It was an act which led Mihrmah and all the other members of the harem to raise their voices in protest. This merchantman, whose freight was estimated by the contemporary Spanish writer Balbi as being worth 80,000 ducats, was seized between the islands of Zante and Cephallonia by three Maltese galleys led by the greatest sailor that the Order of St John possessed, the Chevalier Romegas. The ship was bringing valuable luxuries and merchandise from Venice to Constantinople and, in the manner of the time, the principal ladies of the Imperial harem had taken shares in the venture. Captured and towed back intact to Malta, together with all its cargo, its loss mocked the Sultan’s favourites. Kustir-Aga, the chief eunuch, a personage of great power in the ‘boudoir politics’ of imperial Turkey, was not likely to lose any opportunity of reminding his lord and master of the constant depredations of the Knights.

The odalisques of the harem prostrated themselves before the Sultan, crying for vengeance. The Imam of the great Mosque, prompted no doubt by members of the court, was not slow to remind Soleyman, that True Believers were languishing in the dungeons of the Knights. They were being flogged like dogs at the oars of the very galleys which were raiding the empire’s shipping.

‘It is only thy invincible sword,’ the Imam proclaimed, ‘that can shatter the chains of these unfortunates, whose cries are rising to heaven and afflicting the very ears of the Prophet of God. The son is demanding his father, the wife, her husband and her children. All, therefore, wait upon thee, upon thy justice, and thy power, for vengeance upon their, and your, implacable enemies!’

It was unlikely that the Sultan, whose prudence and ability had been proved in as many council chambers as battlefields, was swayed entirely–if at all–by this clamour for vengeance. Malta was small, but, as he knew well, it was the keystone of the Mediterranean. Within its magnificent harbours he would be able to shelter his fleets, which would then be free for the conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy. The island was small, but it could be the fulcrum to the lever with which he might make the Mediterranean a Turkish lake. From it he could strike at what a later war-leader called ‘the soft underbelly of Europe’. The capture of Kustir-Aga’s merchantman, the effrontery of the attacks on his merchant shipping and coastal ports were additional factors, but irrelevant to his grand design.

Soleyman was well aware that the Knights of St John were not like other Christians. They were men who had dedicated their lives to an eternal war against his religion, and against everything that Turkey, as the leader of the Moslem world, represented. He had fought them at Rhodes and he knew that death in battle was something they sought as ardently as did his own Janissaries. He knew their reputation as sailors and corsairs. He had questioned his own sea-captains who had been in action against the Knights.

‘Their vessels,’ he had been told, ‘are not like others. They have always aboard them great numbers of arquebusiers and of knights who are dedicated to fight to the death. There has never been an occasion when they have attacked one of our ships that they have not either sunk it, or captured it.’ His sea-captains were in error there, for the records of the Knights show a number of occasions when their attempts on Turkish vessels were unsuccessful. In the main, though, it was true that in skill, seamanship, and fighting ability, there was no single vessel in the Mediterranean that could compare with a galley commanded by one of the Knights from Malta. Soleyman knew enough of their prowess to respect them as adversaries. Even as an old man, he would never have decided to attack their island-base purely on a matter of pique or prestige.

In October 1564 at a formal council, or Divan, presided over by the Sultan, the question of Malta and of a possible siege of the island formed the issue of debate. Not all of those present were in favour. Some envisaged an extension of the empire beyond Hungary and pressed for a large-scale military campaign in Europe. Others were for driving straight at the heart of their chief Christian adversary, and making an attack on the coast of Spain. Others, again, urged the capture of Sicily. Soleyman was reminded of the poverty and insignificance of Malta. ‘Many more difficult victories,’ they said, ‘have fallen to your scimitar than the capture of a handful of men in a little island that is not well fortified.’

It was the Sultan himself who pointed out that Malta was the stepping stone to Sicily, and beyond that, to Italy and southern Europe. He envisaged the day when ‘The Grand Seignior, or his deputies, master of the whole Mediterranean, may dictate laws, as universal lord, from that not unpleasant rock, and look down upon his shipping at anchor in its excellent harbour.’ Piali, admiral of the fleet, and Mustapha, Pasha of the army, were not slow to grasp the sound strategy behind Soleyman’s desire to attack the island. When the Divan concluded, the decision had been taken to invest Malta in the spring of the following year.

The edict went forth. The might of the Ottoman Empire–’that military state par excellence…built upon an ever-extending conquest–’ was to be deployed against the minute island of Malta, and against the Knights of the Order of St John. The Sultan himself had spoken: ‘Those sons of dogs whom I have already conquered and who were spared only by my clemency at Rhodes forty-three years ago–I say now that, for their continual raids and insults, they shall be finally crushed and destroyed!’

Prozac. Millions of Americans depend on it. And just about everyone else is wondering if they should be on it, too. The claims of the Prozac chorus are enticing: that it can cure everything from depression (the only disorder for which Prozac was originally approved) to fear of public speaking, Premenstrual Syndrome, obesity, shyness, migraine, and back pain – with few or no side effects. But is the reality quite different? And, maybe most important of all – at what price do we buy Prozac-induced euphoria and a shiny new personality?

Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., and coauthor Ginger Ross Breggin answer these and other crucial questions in Talking Back to Prozac. Learn how

• Prozac was tested in shockingly brief trials before receiving FDA approval
• Prozac’s manufacturer had difficulty proving its effectiveness
• Side effects that the FDA failed to include in its final labeling requirements
• Prozac acts as a stimulant not unlike such addictive drugs as cocaine and amphetamine
• The dangers of possible Prozac addiction and abuse
• The seriousness and frequency of Prozac’s side effects, including agitation, insomnia, nausea, diarrhea, loss of libido, and difficulty reaching orgasm
• The growing evidence that Prozac can cause violence and suicide
• The social and workplace implications of using the drug to change personality and enhance performance

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York. He is the author of many scientific articles and more than twenty books, most recently Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (2008). Many of his cutting edge discoveries on the dangers of psychiatric drugs have been affirmed by recent scientific research and by FDA regulatory actions. He has taught at numerous universities and acts as an expert witness in legal cases involving harm done by psychiatric medication and electroshock.  His courageous and controversial campaigns to stop abusive psychosurgical practices like lobotomy, his activist opposition to unethical and hazardous psychological experimentation on children, and his relentless criticism of business, government, and the medical profession have made him the conscience of psychiatry.

Today his reforms are accepted as humane, reasonable, and practical. It was not always so.

Richard Curtis

No writer should ever have to complain that there’s nowhere to go to get published. There are a million places, and Barnes & Noble just made it a million and one with announcement of a platform called PubIt!™ “PubIt! Enables Independent Publishers and Self-Published Authors Access to Sell eBooks and Content to Millions of Readers on Barnes & Noble’s Online and Digital Platforms,” says the announcement.

Here’s the press release…

*********************************

New York, New York – May 19, 2010 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, is extending its deep and longstanding tradition of supporting authors and publishers with PubIt! by Barnes & Noble, an easy and lucrative way for independent publishers and self-publishing writers to distribute their works digitally through Barnes & Noble.com and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore. The easy-to-use publishing and distribution platform offers qualified independent publishers and authors of self-published works expanded distribution, visibility and protection that only Barnes & Noble can offer.

The announcement marks Barnes & Noble’s latest move to continue to build one of the world’s largest digital catalogs, spanning eBooks, journals, periodicals and other types of reading material. PubIt! titles will be distributed through BN.COM and Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore, which currently offers more than one million digital titles to millions of dedicated customers in-store and online.

Independent publishers and writers will appreciate PubIt!’s simple and competitive royalty model and compensation process, the details of which will be available in the coming weeks. Content owners’ intellectual property will be well-protected with Barnes & Noble’s best-in-class digital rights management technology and offered in the industry standard ePub format that allows publishers’ works to be enjoyed by millions of Barnes & Noble customers on hundreds of the most popular computing, mobile and eBook reading devices.

“As a company that has achieved much of its success by building mutually beneficial relationships with publishers and authors, Barnes & Noble’s new PubIt! service represents an exciting evolution and significant opportunity in the digital content arena,” said Theresa Horner, director, digital products, Barnes & Noble. “Barnes & Noble is uniquely positioned to support writers and publishers and bring their exciting digital works to the broadest audience of readers anywhere.”

Whether online or on-the-go, Barnes & Noble customers will have access to PubIt! titles with the opportunity to browse, sample, buy and download the digital content in seconds to their devices with free BN reader software. Using Barnes & Noble’s breakthrough Read In Store™ technology, NOOK™ customers can also browse the complete contents of PubIt! titles while in Barnes & Noble stores.

PubIt! is a convenient one-stop-shop, allowing publishers to get their content in front of consumers for purchase and reading on the most widely adopted mobile devices and software platforms. By following simple steps to upload their content in an industry standard format for electronic titles, content creators can reach consumers on hundreds of devices including: NOOK by Barnes & Noble, PC, Mac, iPad™, iPhone, BlackBerry and others. For more information on free BN eReader software and apps, please visit www.bn.com/ebooks/download-reader.asp.

More information on PubIt!, which will be available this summer, and the benefits of joining Barnes & Noble’s expansive and trusted digital content catalog can be found at www.bn.com/pubit.

“One morning in the late seventies,” writes Kathryn Lance,  “I saw a short squib in the New York Times business section about a company that was working to genetically alter bacteria that naturally consume oil so that they might be used to clean up oil spills. I thought, ‘Great! But what if your car catches it?’  This idea germinated for a while and became the nucleus of the setting for Pandora’s Genes and Pandora’s Children, post-holocaust adventure novels set in the late 21st century. In the world I came to imagine, genetically engineered bacteria were used on a particularly severe oil spill, and mutated to develop a taste for all petroleum products. The new bacteria spread rapidly, destroying the functionality of all machinery that runs on oil products, as well as all things containing plastic and other petro-based items.”

In Pandora’s Genes, an absorbing and unique novel, Kathryn Lance asks how far the folly of mankind can go, how much science can be substituted for nature before the imbalance proves disastrous. In a world of the future, great machines lie rusting as their fuel has finally run out and humanity faces the possibility of extinction as altered strands of DNA run rampant through the gene pool. Several forces emerge, each hoping to be humanity’s saving grace, but which one will ultimately save the world?

E-Reads has published Pandora’s Genes and its sequel Pandora’s Children at a time when the world Lance projected – after a fictional holocaust – may be creating itself before our very eyes.

We asked Kathryn Lance to write some remarks tying her books to the oil spill now disgorging its horrifying contents into the Gulf of Mexico. You can read them in full here.

RC

With a mixture of genuine admiration and mean-spirited schadenfreude we’ve been following Cory Doctorow’s monthly journal tracking the progress of his self-published book With a Little Help. Doctorow set out to show publishers he could do what they do as well as they do it but at a fraction of the cost.  We’ve cheered his adept management of challenges that have daunted many a publishing behemoth. And we’ve clucked “I told you so” when he stumbled, smugly rejoicing to see an upstart put in his place.

His latest report mixes failure and triumph, but his unflinching candor in describing both is truly touching and he’s quite winning the cynics over, making it hard to wish him ill. Even the crustiest curmudgeon among us is trudging to the finish line to cheer him on.

First, the bad news. “When I launched this column,” he writes, “the plan was to have copies of With a Little Help into final production by October 2009, and to have it for sale by Christmas. Instead, I find myself in the final throes of production in early May, with a likely pub date of June or July 2010. How’d that happen?”

Here’s how. Doctorow discovered that publishing a book is a complex process that heavily relies on other people. This is a bedrock fact that any tyro who has worked even one day at a publisher understands. The problem is, Cory Doctorow has not worked one day at a publisher, though he has certainly been involved with enough social enterprises that he should not be surprised at how difficult it is to organize tasks efficiently. We hold with the proverb that he travels fastest who travels alone.  Conversely, he travels slowest who travels with companions.  And to publish a book is to travel with companions. Even one companion creates complexities, unpredictability and delays.

“It turns out,” he declares, “that a few tasks were dependent on earlier stages. And Murphy’s Law being what it is, this meant delays. Specifically, as I wrote in March, typesetting delays meant that I couldn’t get into final cover designs and proofing, nor could I get into prototyping for the limited edition hardcovers. The sound editing couldn’t be done until the sound recording was done, and some of my readers had other priorities that took precedence (such as paying work!). In hindsight, I should have taken notice that the two tasks with the largest number of dependencies were also the tasks that required the most work from my collaborators.”

But there’s plenty of good news, too.  For one thing, he’s almost finished the book. It’s a matter of a few months, and we’ll look forward to seeing it in midsummer.

Even better, he’s brought his book in on a budget that would scarcely fill the petty cash box at Simon & Schuster:

• Cover art: $1,000.
• Postage: $200 (for SASEs for people who donated paper ephemera).
• Scanning: $627.30 (paid an assistant to scan the ephemera).
• Recording studio: $250 (one of my readers needed help with studio rental).
• Fonts: $120 (per my typesetter’s recommendation).
• Galleys: $58.90 (four galleys, one for each cover, plus shipping, from Lulu).

Total expense: $2,256.20

But he’s not out of the woods. For in Doctorow’s case even a publishing company of one (himself) can be a problem if the publisher is also an author. “Now there is another snag,” he reports. “I’m on the road for my next book tour, going out with my YA novel For the Win, for Tor. I’ll be hitting Chicago; Austin, Tex.; Boston; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; San Francisco; New York; and Toronto. I’ll be on the road from May 10 to June 6—which means I won’t be able to really get into hardcover prototyping until I return to London, mid-June. The handmade hardcovers are the kind of thing that I have to be in town to oversee. Unlike a real publisher, I don’t have someone who keeps the project moving while I’m preoccupied or on the road.”

Why Doctorow characterizes himself as not “a real publisher” is hard to say. He is every bit a real publisher.  He just happens to have discovered along the way that he can’t do it all himself.

Read the latest installment of our Cory Watch, Closing In.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Publishers Weekly.

After the eruption of Iceland’s unpronounceable volcano disrupted the London Book Fair last month, Publishing Perspectives’ editor Ed Nawotka wondered why “no one is trying to find a way to teleconference people in or to schedule online chats,” and asked if there was any interest in a virtual book conference.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

Technology and bandwidth have advanced to the point where it is entirely feasible to mount a virtual trade conference, one that would be fully participatory for traditional and e-book publishers, booksellers, librarians, educators, literary agents, authors, book-related exhibitors and their technology counterparts – plus the most important attendee of them all, readers; all from the comfort of their homes, offices or commute.

Virtual trade shows are a common practice in many other industries, and there have already been a couple of virtual book fairs including Virtual Children’s Book Fair and the Poisoned Pen Mystery Writers conference which included a number of live and on-demand webcasts of “more than 50 panels and presentations featuring over 65 mystery and crime authors.”

While both examples are relatively modest, they prove it can be done, and the model can be scaled upwards for a full-fledged virtual book expo that participants could attend in their bathrobes!

While the main event itself could be of short duration, it could easily morph into a 24/7/365 marketplace centered around books and authors, publishers, booksellers, bloggers AND readers; a kind of “Second Life” for the book publishing industry. It could be a combination website, bazaar, and social gaming environment where real business is done, books are bought and sold, but with a high fun quotient limited only by the technical skills of art departments, web designers and graphic artists, and the boundless imagination of the publishing industry.

What do you think? Is publishing ready to go beyond eBooks and take the digital transition to the next level?

Richard Curtis

Background on Pandora’s Genes and Pandora’s Children.

One morning in the late seventies I saw a short squib in the New York Times business section about a company that was working to genetically alter bacteria that naturally consume oil so that they might be used to clean up oil spills. I thought, “Great! But what if your car catches it?”

This idea germinated for a while and became the nucleus of the setting for Pandora’s Genes and Pandora’s Children, post-holocaust adventure novels set in the late 21st century. In the world I came to imagine, genetically engineered bacteria were used on a particularly severe oil spill, and mutated to develop a taste for all petroleum products. The new bacteria spread rapidly, destroying the functionality of all machinery that runs on oil products, as well as all things containing plastic and other petro-based items. Among the things destroyed were the fail-safe seals that confined other recombinant-DNA experiments, as well as deadly viruses being engineered in secret germ-warfare research. The result was a greatly de-populated world, with many animal and insect species extinct or deleteriously altered, and with no remnants of what we consider modern technology.

One of the engineered diseases let loose was an inheritable illness in which affected women die in childbirth, usually upon having a second female child. The resulting rarity of women is the plot point that sets my story in motion. Both novels focus on two opposed groups, one which wishes to restore some semblance of civilization, and their antagonists, a fanatical religious group dedicated to the final, total eradication of all remnants of “science” and the “wild deenas” (DNA) that science loosed on the world. (They make the sacred sign of the double spiral in their rites.)

When the current Gulf of Mexico oil disaster occurred, and I read that one of the possible solutions was oil-eating bacteria, I must admit to a little chill of déjà-vu. I hope whatever is tried ultimately works, but I can’t help wondering what will happen if the experts begin using engineered bacteria on a large scale, and what other parts of my books might then come true.
Kathryn Lance is the author or ghost of more than fifty books of fiction and nonfiction, for children and adults, as well as countless articles. Her most recent sci-fi publication, in the December, 2008 Asimov’s, was “Welcome to Valhalla,” co-written with Jack McDevitt.

“America’s dairy farmers could soon find themselves in the computer business, with the manure from their cows possibly powering the vast data centers of companies like Google and Microsoft.” writes Ashlee Vance in the New York Times.

“The rise of higher-speed data transfer networks, however, has given technology companies a chance to move farther from large populations and still be able to get information to them as quickly as they need it. So companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com and Microsoft have been engaged in a mad dash to find spots in the United States that have plenty of electricity and land. As a result, more data centers have been built in states like Washington, Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma. If those locations are near dairy farms, so much the better.”

Are we missing a bet by not setting one up in Washington DC?

Details in One Moos and One Hums, but They Could Help Power Google

RC

Mike Shatzkin is a future Prognostication Hall of Famer but by his own admission he tapped a weak grounder to shortstop when he predicted that the iPad wouldn’t not have an “immediate significant impact on ebook sales.” In fact, the impact was nothing short of explosive.  For a couple of publishers, e-book sales tripled or even quadrupled after the Apple introduced its device.

Shatzkin’s prediction had by no means been crackpot. Though he knew the iPad would sell big time (it ended up selling 1 million units in a few weeks after launch), like so many of us he figured its biggest use would be videos and games, not reading. He was also skeptical that a lot of people would want to read on a pinkie-busting 1.5 pound iPad (Kindle weights 10 ounces).

How wrong can a prophet be? “I was proved wrong in less than a month,” confesses Shatzkin in a recent posting.  “Apparently if we get slightly larger and portable screens into people’s hands, they want to read books on them.” And consumers obviously were willing to sacrifice their pinkies to be early adopters of the iPad.

It’s okay, Mike. Your .299 batting average still puts you in MVP contention.

Richard Curtis