Just in case Santa brings you a new Kindle (or device that can use the Kindle app), Mad Science Institute will be only  99 cents on Christmas day, 12/25/2012!

For those of you getting new Nooks or iPads, it will FINALLY be available on those devices on February 1, 2013.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the release of Mad Science Institute. When I started working on it about 3 years ago, I knew enough about Nikola Tesla to know that he was the benevolent king of all mad scientists, and that he should be the founder of my fictional institute. But I didn’t know much more than that, and everyone else seemed to know even less.

Back then, Tesla was like a well-kept secret. Here was the inventor whose work was at the heart of our entire electrical grid and all the devices that run off it (not to mention his pioneering of radio, robotics, x-rays and more). And yet nobody had heard about him.

But all that seems to have changed in only a few years’ time. It seems like Tesla’s name is everywhere now, and he’s the star of television, comics, and video games. His name graces an automotive company, and a crowd-funding effort a few months back resulted in more than 30,000 people contributing over 1.3 million dollars to the founding of a Tesla museum in New York.

I wish I could take credit for the rise in Tesla-awareness, but about all I can claim is that I was a Tesla Hipster. Still, I hope this trend continues and he gets his name into the history books where it belongs.

Viva la Spark-Punk Revolution!

And how about you? Are you a Tesla hipster or are you only now hearing about this historical figure? Leave a comment to let me know.

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I’m pleased to say that on Sunday I penned the conclusion of the rough draft for the sequel to Mad Science Institute. It’s a bigger, wilder, more complex book than the first, but I think it keeps the same pace and has just as many kabooms, pows, and kablooies.

This is by no means the end of the process. Next, I will need to revise, then edit, then revise, then send it out to beta readers and editors and after that there will be revisions, revisions, revisions. I still can’t give you a release date, but this is an important milestone because it means I now have all the important elements and events pinned down. and it concludes the longest single step along the path to getting the book into your hands.

 

The most common question I get about Mad Science Institute is: When will the sequel land? I love that question because it means that people are as excited for it as I am, so I wanted to give everyone a project update.

Right now, I’m on a heck of a roll. I’m a bit more than half way through the rough draft, and it’s coming together much faster than the original did—I think because now I know all the characters and have established the world. With the original, it was like building a diorama without even knowing whether I should use wood, plastic, aluminum, or what. This time, it feels like I’m putting it together with Legos because everything is clicking in a way that I didn’t reach on the last one until towards the end of the process.

Many of you have noticed the progress bar that I installed in the left column of this blog (take a look: it’s right over there ß). Many of you have also noticed that I haven’t been bumping it up much lately. That’s because I created a byzantine little formula for how much I should bump the meter based on how much I’ve typed. The thing is that I do a lot of my writing on the bus (it’s a GREAT place to write—every seat is filled by a potential character model), and I ended up with a pinched nerve because typing on a little netbook in a cramped seat is a nightmare scenario as far as ergonomics goes.

So I switched do doing my rough draft with a pen and spiral notebook. Gone is the pinched nerve, and welcome is the explosion of words. It’s got me thinking that I should do rough drafts on paper even when I don’t have to (many writers do).

The slowdown on the progress bar is just that I’ve been generating the hand-written rough draft faster than I’ve been able to re-type it, so it doesn’t factor into the listed progress. That bar was never meant to be anything other than a rough estimate, but I may re-work my formula to better represent my completed-ness.

November is NaNoWriMo (“National Novel Writing Month”) in which authors of all levels attempt to complete the rough draft of a 50,000 word novel in a single month. It’s a bit like a marathon, except that instead of 26.2 miles it takes 30 days. Writers sometimes disappear from Facebook and Twitter during November, or they don’t return calls until December because they’re too busy driving towards the end of their story.

Even in rough draft form, that’s a lot to do in a month. In a happy coincidence, it’s also the approximate amount I have left to go on the rough draft of Mad Science 2, so I’m going to go for it. After this, it will still take months of typing, revisions, editing, layout, printing, and so forth, but this will be a huge step towards putting the sequel into your hands.

Even if I don’t get the draft done, I’ll still get pretty close. Wish me luck!

 

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Not long ago, Andy Gill, a former student of mine turned film student, contacted me about making a video for Mad Science Institute. He and his talented friend Jake Waluconis wrote a script and assembled a team of talented folks.

After you watch, feel free to subscribe to my Youtube channel. I doubt I’ll be posting many videos, but you never know.

Unravelers of Mystery: Mad Science Institute

and, yes, that’s my wife playing the lovely HR rep, and some bozo playing the “Writer/Nut.”

 

Help! I need a new name for my sub-genre. Mad Science Instituteis clearly science fiction—what other genre could handle cloned lizard-monsters, EMP weapons, and a robot scorpion-dog? My trouble is that people automatically assume that sci-fi means it’s set in the distant future or on a distant planet or both.

But Mad Science Institute takes place right now, with characters who bring dangerous, game-changing technologies into the world as it is today. I’m not aware of any sub-genres that would properly describe this novel, so I want your help in finding or creating a name for these kinds of stories.

I’m not alone in this sub-genre. Michael Chrichton gave us numerous stories of discoveries that change our world, from cloned dinosaurs in Jurassic Park to deadly nanites in Prey. Also, almost any superhero could fit this category, since their powers typically originate from some form of world-shaking technology (often un-duplicable, as in the case of Captain America’s super-soldier serum, or jealously guarded, as in the case of Ironman’s and Batman’s devices). Even the old James Bond movies showed how high tech gizmos could dramatically influence the outcome of cold-war espionage.

Maybe I should go with the category of Cyberpunk, but this connotes a futuristic setting of powerful corporations and advanced computers. I want to throw the net wider to include all sorts of new tech, as well as how it impacts our world right now.

I think we need such stories, because they reflect the changing paradigms of our time. Our world has been restructured by online shopping, reconstructed by Facebook, and renovated by smart phones. When the US went to war in Afghanistan, it had no automated drones in the field and now it has thousands. Private corporations are now sending people into space while our government has to rent seats on Russian rockets. And almost all of that has happened in the last ten years. Ten years.

Technology has thrown our world into a state of massive upheaval: science fiction stories can be set right now because we are already living in a science fiction world. It’s only natural that we would want stories depicting characters reacting to—perhaps even driving—these changes.

Fantasy literature has a name for stories about magic and monsters placed in a contemporary setting. It’s called “urban fantasy” and anyone who’s read Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books knows that this genre breathes new life into old forms, as well as makes fantastic concepts more immediate to our daily lives. I think we need the same thing for Sci-Fi.

So what do I call my favorite sub-genre: Urban Sci-Fi? Neo-cyberpunk Sci-Fi? Modern S-F? Or am I off my rocker and arguing for something that doesn’t need a category?

Let me know what you think or what name we should coin (if any) by leaving a comment below. Thanks!

For you fans of the Ubiquity RPG system, this is the game scenario that I ran last week at Gencon. It’s got some experimental rules for making Mad Science something more usable during scenes (rather than something for NPCs or downtime). If none of that makes sense to you, then don’t download this. To the rest of you: happy rolling!

 

Download “Mad Science in the Hollow Earth” RPG scenario

 

It’s here! Even if you don’t own a kindle, you can now get a free download of “Soap’s Guide 2 Technology,” the essay written by the Institute’s main mad scientist herself. This is for those who want to really geek out or who just want a refresher course in the sci-fi ideas that fuel Mad Science Institute’s mayhem.

 

Download “Soap’s Guide 2 Technology” on PDF

 

My fellow Mad-Scientist Americans,

 

The European Commission recently launched a public campaign aimed at getting girls interested in science. Their tactic? Add some pink ribbons and declare that “it’s a girl thing.” It’s sassy, cloying, and kind of annoying. Is this the right way to go?

It’s no secret that women are still not equally represented in scientific fields, despite the fact that women own half of the best brains on the planet (and maybe more, depending on whom you talk to).

 

Digression

Actually, there is one exception to science fields lacking a feminine touch: medical science. Medical schools (and, indeed, all colleges across this country) are seeing a huge imbalance of qualified female applicants.

Why are boys trailing behind in preparedness for higher education? Some pundits argue that we, as a society, tolerate much more goofing-off from male children and hold them to a lower standard. Others suggest that boys are, by nature, poorly geared for the passive learning expected in many of our classrooms today. Or that boys are more distracted by video games, sports, and other pass-times that drag down academic efforts.

Well, that’s a topic for another post, but I wanted to bring it up because it shows that despite the disproportionately HIGH number of qualified female students, we’re still seeing a disproportionately LOW number going for math and science degrees. The numbers are getting better, but they’re still not satisfactory.

 

Back to the issue

So the question is, how do we get more girls interested into science?

I’ll admit, equalizing gender participation in science was an ulterior motive when I wrote Mad Science Institute, which is why I created strong female characters who were on equal footing with their male counterparts in the realm of science. Others have attempted to popularize the notion in similar ways, such as Claudia the hacker from Warehouse 13 or Amy Farrah Fowler from The Big Bang Theory, or… um… hmmm. I’m coming up with blanks. I’m sure there must be plenty more examples, right? Help me think of some!

 

The real question(s)

The real question might be: what keeps girls out of science in the first place? Are they learning unspoken prejudices from their parents and teachers? Do they simply lack role-models in scientific fields? If we could answer that, we’d be much better of

But the even more real question might be: how do we get MORE kids of BOTH GENDERS into science? In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman points out America’s acute need for scientists and engineers. Tech firms aren’t hiring foreign workers because they want to, they’re hiring them because America isn’t supplying enough of its own brain-power any more.

 

If elected president…

Science education—and, indeed, all education—will become THE central focus of my administration. Why aren’t the other candidates discussing the gender gap in science careers—or the general gap in science careers for both genders? Write to your favorite politician to ask them about this issue. If they aren’t willing to address this, it’s time to find a new candidate.

AMERICA CAN’T AFFORD TO IGNORE ITS (future) MAD SCIENTISTS ANY LONGER

 

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An appendix titled “Soap’s Guide 2 Technology,” as well as a table of contents, will be added to the Kindle edition of Mad Science Institute.

The Kindle version featuring the new material will be available June 29, 2012, and will be a free download from June 29 to 30. In August, I’ll make “Soap’s Guide 2 Technology”available as a free PDF which may be downloaded from this www.SechinTower.com.

I designed these additions to provide the reader with an easy reference guide to the fictional inventions, creatures, and locations related to the events of Mad Science Institute. The story itself requires no scientific knowledge to understand, but I wanted to include this new section for people like me who want to ‘geek out’ about the more imaginative aspects of the book. At the same time, I wanted to make it entertaining, which is why I have written it in Soap’s distinctive voice.

If you’ve already read it, I hope you’ll enjoy the extra bits. If you haven’t read it, I hope you take the opportunity to download it and read the book everyone’s raving about.

By the way, in 10 days I’m declaring my bid for a political office. Stay tuned to this site for more!