Interview with Greg Bear, author of Quantico

As we mentioned in a previous post, QUANTICO by Greg Bear, there's a dedicated site for the book with lots of features including an interview with the author. We had our own questions, some of which were, unsurprisingly, ebook-related and Mr. Bear was kind enough to spend some time answering them with these exclusive comments.

E-Reads: You have been quoted as saying that QUANTICO is the poster child for alternative publishing. What occasioned the remark and what did you mean by it?

GB: QUANTICO was originally contracted to a very large New York publisher, as part of a three-book deal. When it was delivered, it was summarily rejected--with prejudice. Every other big publisher rejected it as well. The book seemed cursed. To say I was dejected is putting it mildly--I thought my career in books was teetering. Then, Andrew Wheeler at Science Fiction Book Club picked it up for a multi-club deal. That was encouraging, but I thought that would be it--no trade edition to speak of in the U.S. When Richard Curtis proposed working with Roger Cooper at Perseus, on an unorthodox basis--no advance, double royalties, quarterly royalty statements--what did we have to lose? I had worked with Roger before at iBooks, where he had nicely repackaged books such as BLOOD MUSIC, selling many copies--he was a very good publisher. Roger took the bull by the horns, handed it over to his excellent team, who packaged it in a very attractive cover, then solicited and received large orders from chain bookstores and distributors. Generous quotes from excellent writers helped a lot--but the orders were impressive, to me, even before we received their lovely words. Within a few weeks of publication, we began to see wonderful results. Through hard work, ingenuity, and focus, Perseus-Vanguard worked a major miracle--they turned a cursed book into a charmed book. By the time Jennifer Richards, our magnificent publicist, informed me that I was invited to be on THE DAILY SHOW, we were already shipping better numbers than I had ever seen in my career. We have yet to learn what the actual "bump" will be from THE DAILY SHOW appearance, but already I'm happy--and encouraged. It appears my career is far from dead. QUANTICO has already sold more copies--as reported in the first royalty statements--than any of my previous hardback editions, including DARWIN'S RADIO.

E-Reads: Do you have any ideas about why you are the biggest-selling Science Fiction writer in ebooks?

GB: That's certainly true for some titles. Del Rey/Random House did a fine job with DARWIN'S RADIO and DARWIN'S CHILDREN, putting them in the top ten of all electronic book fiction sales. Richard and I have always tried to reserve electronic rights, and we immediately put many of my available novels into good programs, including his excellent E-Reads catalog. Most publishers seem to have little idea what to do with the electronic rights they've reserved--certainly no idea how to market them. I have to guess why the DARWIN'S books sold so well. I told my publishers that a significant audience was going to be found among working biologists and geneticists--many of whom travel the world and pass recommendations on to their colleagues in other countries, who read English fluently. Before foreign editions could be made available, the electronic editions were ready to be downloaded.

E-Reads: It seemed initially that UK publishers were more receptive to QUANTICO than U.S. publishers were. Was the subject of the story too touchy or do you think there was another explanation for the issue?

GB: I have no actual evidence that politics of any sort played a role in the U.S. editorial decisions. I would be dismayed if it did, since QUANTICO appears to be so thoroughly in the mainstream of current public opinion. I'd like to think my editors in the U.S. were more dialed in. QUANTICO might have been a little radical two years ago--but now, its take on the near-future--right down to a growing alliance with the Sunnis in Iraq, against the Shiites of al-Maliki and Iran--seems eerily prophetic.

E-Reads: Technology plays an ever-increasing role in U.S. war expenditures and the defense budget. The evidence in Iraq is that we don't seem to be buying much of an advantage for our troops with this huge investment. You're publicly known to have been involved in advising branches of the government about specific possible future scenarios. What overall advice would you offer on how things should be done differently?

GB: The military and security professionals "on the ground" have been
acutely aware of these difficulties since before the beginning. A guerrilla war is always long and costly and difficult to finesse with big weapons systems. The same is true with any so-called "war on terror." Large military solutions seem a poor fit. The problem we still face has to do with our leadership at the top. Incompetent leaders take bad advice, get too many soldiers killed, and waste huge sums of money without tangible result. The wrong leaders chose to fight the wrong enemy at the wrong time--with a lot of inferior equipment. A perfect storm of FUBAR. I still hope we can pull some fat out of the fire--for the sake of the troops and their families, who have given so much. (No one can understand that sacrifice who has not experienced it. I can sympathize, but I cannot feel about any of this the way they do.) But our leadership seems to have run out of solutions. They seem stymied and exhausted--those who still remain in power.

E-Reads: If you were writing QUANTICO from scratch right now in light of current experiences in the Iraq war, what would you change about the book, if anything?

GB: Not much. A few small details. I'm on tenterhooks about this growing relationship with the Sunnis. The irony of that is breathtaking. As for the American Anthrax case, the FBI seems to have abandoned all previous theories.

E-Reads: What's next? I hear that your next book is called CITY AT THE END OF TIME. Can you tell us something more about it? Is it finished? What kind of book is it? When will it be published?

GB: CITY AT THE END OF TIME is completed in draft, and I'm revising it now. It's as far afield from QUANTICO as can be--an adventure sf-fantasy novel with literary, philosophical, and strong physics overtones, set in both the very far future, and present-day Seattle. Del Rey currently plans to publish in the U.S. next year, perhaps in the summer, if I can get off my duff and get the manuscript to them in time.