Twilight of the Mind is out!

michael_ely · January 29, 2002, 23:44

Hey everyone

Just wanted to let you know that Twilight of the Mind is out, the final installment in the Alpha Centauri trilogy of novels. It's available at good old www.amazon.com and should also be available at your local bookseller (though it can be tough to find...some bookstores put it in the regular sci-fi section, and some mix it in with the Star Trek books and other game books).

The blurb from the back reads:

"A century after the events of Dragon Sun, civilization is braced for a final reckoning. Science and faith collide as the fanatical Believers of Sister Miriam vie with the technological might of Prokhor Zakharov in a merciless war of destruction.

"Five beseiged factions join the battle against Miriam's zealots while Zakharov and Miriam spar in the virtual labyrinth of a sprawling technological network. As the planet Chiron prepares itself for a new era, humanity's struggle hurtles toward a shocking conclusion..."

Hmmm, "fanatical believers" versus "technolgical might?" It may sound familiar, but the manuscript for this book was actually written before the events of Sept 11th. Lal, Morgan and the Human Hive also play a role in this book. There is a summary note in the beginning of the book for those who haven't read the others in the series.

Hope you enjoy...

michael ely

RedFred · January 29, 2002, 23:47

Thanks for the update!

Are you planning anything in the way of upcoming books with the SMACX characters?

Kassiopeia · January 30, 2002, 11:43

I originally posted this in the Civ3 thread, but here goes anyway:

Mister Ely, Sir, are there any plans to combine the three books to one big version? Haven't read any of them, and could use the possibility to reduce postage costs...?

The diplomat · January 30, 2002, 16:09

Michael Ely: Would it be possible to get a sample chapter to wet our appetites?
Please

michael_ely · January 30, 2002, 16:30

Hey there

The answers to all your questions:

There are no plans to combine the three books into one at this time. Of course, if you ordered all three from amazon.com at once that would save some postage at least.

Also, no plans now for the SMACx characters, although that would be cool.

And finally, I am getting a sample chapter together to send to Dan and Mark to post up here.

thanks!
michael

SixArmedMan · January 30, 2002, 16:34

Yay! I'm making it a point to get it today! I was thinking February but I'm not really complaining!

Mampfred · January 30, 2002, 16:49

Are there going to be any books playing in the SMAC/SMAX setting at all, maybe also by other authors? And if so can you already tell us more about them

?

Kassiopeia · January 30, 2002, 17:18

Quote:

Originally posted by michael_ely
There are no plans to combine the three books into one at this time. Of course, if you ordered all three from amazon.com at once that would save some postage at least.

OK, fair enough.

King_Kristian · January 31, 2002, 16:00

I just bought all three of ME's books after only reading the dragon sun exerpt (is that spelled right?) and i wonder are these books connected in any way (the same planet situation, faction placement.)
I also ordered Power of the mindworms(the graphic novel), is it connected to Ely's books?

Well now I just sit back and wait untill Amazon ship the books, how many pages are there by the way?
Maybe I will play a couple of SMAC game to wait, wonder how many games I could pay in three weeks.
Living in a small northern european (Norway)country sucks.

Silence · February 1, 2002, 17:23

Its was a good book, though I wished for a slighty happier ending.

It was funny how the game I was playing as the Lord's Believers turned out to have several parrells to book.

Hydro · February 1, 2002, 19:10

King_Kristian,

ME's books are a trilogy, and each one highlights different factions. The first features the Spartans and PKs, the second primarily the Gaians and Yang (with Morgan and Santiago), and the last (apparently) Zak and Miriam, with others. The books are chronological, although the first two were independent enough to stand as separate novels.

I liked both novels one and two, which were average-sized paperbacks. Hope you enjoy them, too!

Hydro

2dfx · February 2, 2002, 07:24

According to the firaxis SMAC site, Dragon Sun has been "just released".

Is it possible get the sample chapter soon? I'm dying to read some of it while I wait for the book to ship to Australia.

michael_ely · February 3, 2002, 16:59

Hi 2dfx

I sent the chapter to Dan and Markos, so they should put it up soon. But if you can't wait, you can email me at bookthoughts@yahoo.com and I'll send it out to you...

michael

MarkG · February 5, 2002, 04:19

here it is

http://apolyton.net/smac/frame.shtml...chapter1.shtml

attached it's in rtf format.
if the save dialog has "attachment.php" as the file name, change it to Twilight.rtf

many thanks to Michael!!

The diplomat · February 5, 2002, 12:14

I just read the sample chapter: the storyline sounds really really cool. I will just have to go out and buy the book!

SerapisIV · February 5, 2002, 23:41

Thanks for giving up the first chapter Michael. I'm still waiting on Amazon to get off its butt and ship out here to the tundra that is the Midwest.

Any new projects on the table? Non-SMAC I assume.

SixArmedMan · February 8, 2002, 23:32

Wow... I read it. Any particular reason why you chose to end the series like this?

michael_ely · February 9, 2002, 01:41

Hey SixArmed:

Well, being careful not to give anything away to those who haven't read it...

I have always considered SMAC to be a violent series. It starts in violence (colonists fleeing from an earth that annihilated itself, only to have those colonists mutiny before they even reach the new world), and most (but not all) people play it in a warlike manner, so the ending reflects some of that. Also, my intention in the books was to focus on the individual human stories set against the chaos of the world.

It's these individuals that live with the consequences of humanity's darker aspects, and these individuals, specifically Pravin, that hold the hope of any future world which shakes off these tendencies.

Hmmm...that's a long-winded way to say it just seemed the thing to do. It actually might interest you to know that the original ending of the series was that humanity would develop some kind of time-travel tech that allowed them to "rewind time" and save Earth, but I decided that was far too pat and not true to the game world.

And for Serapis, when I have any new projects I will surely let the community know! It's funny that you have Elvis Lives in your sig, since I was the guy who put the Elvis impersonator into Civ2...

mike

bondetamp · February 9, 2002, 09:39

Quote:

Originally posted by michael_ely
... I was the guy who put the Elvis impersonator into Civ2 ...

My hero.

SixArmedMan · February 10, 2002, 01:39

Thanks for the response. It's nice to know the interpretation behind the book! I kinda' expected an ending that would've left things open-ended... but this had so much more impact. It was a great book though! I totally enjoyed reading it!

King_Kristian · February 12, 2002, 09:30

I have finally recieved the books from Amazon and I have read the two first and have started on number three, excellent work Ely, keep em comin!

I noticed the "grand" map you posted on the Dragon Sun Book, could the grand author Ely make a new map with the locations of the remaining factions and the new colonies on the last continent.
It would be usefull for mod making.

SerapisIV · February 15, 2002, 11:53

Quote:

Originally posted by michael_ely
And for Serapis, when I have any new projects I will surely let the community know! It's funny that you have Elvis Lives in your sig, since I was the guy who put the Elvis impersonator into Civ2...

mike

Now that was one of the smartest production moves ever... Making the king part of your empire. Too bad Firaxis yanked him with the exception of the easter egg in the credits.

Pretty good book so far Mike, I'm 100 pages in, having read it entirely on campus buses over the past 2 days. It's a very interesting take on the genetic tweaking of people, it becoming commonplace. It's a nice interpolation from the current events on genetic cloning and stem cell ethical debates.

I also really like the leaders becoming calloused by their genetic treatments, it makes their personalities and actions more like twisted demagogues and tyrants then benevolent leaders.

Atlas3060 · February 21, 2002, 17:59

You took Santiago out like a hit target!

the book was good, anticlimatic, but good.

but still poor Santiago!

Frankychan · February 26, 2002, 20:53

YANG LIVES!!!

I was not disappointed in reading the novel, I couldn't put it down. I like how 'Twilight' had more than two perspectives, unlike Centauri Dawn and Dragon Sun. It seemed that main characters were Morgan and Zakharov instead of Zak and Miriam. But I'm not complaining!

And I really do like how the Hive participated in the last novel as well! Human Hive...still alive! And we got a singularity buster as well!!

Atlas3060 · February 27, 2002, 00:14

Santiago is Dead!

michael_ely · February 28, 2002, 13:21

Santiago dead? Wha…

Oh, waitaminute. Looks like an editorial error left off the epilogue! Well, let me rectify that right now. Behold, the Lost Epilogue of Twilight of the Mind:

Epilogue

Santiago groaned and opened her eyes. All around her the rocky landscape rolled on in twisted, blackened waves, the destruction continuing into the hazy distance. There was nothing left of Sparta Command or its legions of hardened soldiers. Everything had been vaporized.

She climbed slowly to her feet. Her armor had been vaporized as well, and a fine gray ash covered her skin. Luckily her 10,000 crunches and ten-hour daily workouts had toughened her body to beyond-titanium hardness. Aside from a dull ache in her back, she showed little effect from the Sin Buster that had demolished her entire territory.

"Man, what a day!" Her words fell flat in the dead air, but it felt good to speak. It felt good to be alive.

She had no food or water. She had no weapons or means of transportation or even a pair of boots. Jagged rocks and boiling pits of superheated minerals rolled on in every direction, and she technically couldn't even breathe the poisonous air.

But heck, she was alive. And she had a score to settle. She had never needed, or wanted, any more than that.

She turned eastward, toward the lands of Sister Miriam. She set off at a run, her feet crunching on the tortured ground.

Atlas3060 · February 28, 2002, 18:32

*sarcasm*
Ha Ha
very funny

Hydro · March 24, 2002, 22:51

**WARNING - SOME DETAILS ON THE BOOKS REVIELED AS PART OF THIS INFORMAL REVIEW. IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM AND WANT TO PLEASE READ NO FURTHER**

I’ve had a little while to digest Mr. Ely’s trilogy and I have to say that, overall, I was disappointed. The first book was OK, but it had way too much allegory and symbolism to ancient Sparta, which I found to be distracting. I kept thinking that people in the 22nd Century would not behave and fight like that, and the situations seemed a bit forced. Moreover, some of the faction leaders seemed out of character. Would Santiago really starve her people in the pursuit of the perfect soldier? Or execute children because they didn’t measure up (ancient Sparta reportedly let deformed infants die, but not citizens, although they had a large slave class and a rather brutal system of justice)? And, when she had captured UN Headquarters, it is my opinion that she would not give it back to Lal the weakling. Throughout this entire book I was unable to suspend disbelief, which is a bad thing for a science fiction book.

By comparison I really enjoyed the second book. The conflict between Dee, Morgan, and Santiago seemed refreshing and I could see them behaving in exactly in that way. Yang’s problems were presented in an innovative way, and the brutal reality of his society seemed chillingly clear (if a bit blunt for such an apparently deep thinker). This, and Dee’s little detour and her talks with Planet, spun an engaging tapestry that I wholly enjoyed. And the twist at the end was unexpected, and showed the depth of Yang in both his brilliance and paranoia. Excellent!

The last book was at best disappointing. While I found Miriam’s motivations to be believable (if you will forgive the pun), I was distressed that her followers acted like irrational fanatics (as if all religious people are like this, and they are not). The reactions of Morgan and Zak seemed to paint them as blind idiots. “Haven’t they heard of defensive probes?” I kept thinking to myself. Moreover, why would they fall for these probe ploys again and again? They may have been surprised the first time, but neither of these leaders is stupid. These plot devices were forgivable (if annoying), but the ending is what really torked me off. After fighting for survival for almost 200 years and knowing the fate of Earth I found it completely unbelievable that Dee, and to a lesser extent Morgan and Zak, would simply abandon their followers and the rest of humanity so they and a select cadre of specials could dream until they died (can you say Dr. Strangelove?), knowing that humanity had just gone extinct (sorry if I just spilled the beans…). The only faction leaders that were true were Miriam who stayed with her people to the bitter end, Santiago who went down fighting, and Lal who in the end simply wouldn’t give up (although for the wrong reasons). Also, I screamed NO NO NO when the Believers simply pulled a singularity out of Zak’s uberweapon and plunked into a planetbuster. I can see it now: “Hey! What’s this thingy? It must be a singularitywhatchamacallit! Let’s put it in this here planetbuster and blow up the world! Yah, that’s the ticket! Praise be to God!” Please. I don’t think so. A technologically backward people would have no idea how to do this, even with the help of a few brainwashed University scientists (as if scientist are interchangeable, and they are not, especially for this super-secret and super-specialized technology like this). The best they could do is be absorbed by the microsingularity as it got away from them, putting a nice, clean end to New Jerusalem or wherever they were fiddling with this very dangerous device. Book 3 did not pass the red-faced test for me, and I almost put the book down at this point. There has only been one book that I have put down and not finished in disgust before, and this almost became the second.

The three books had lots of innovation, and the good parts in Book 2 are gems. My gripes about Book 1 and 3 can probably be attributed to personal taste and my vision of the faction leaders and their societies. I’ve already given the books away (and, sadly, was vindicated when the new owner had exactly the same reaction that I did).

Hydro

michael_ely · March 27, 2002, 16:43

Hey Hydro

Thanks for the comments. I think it would have been fair to say "Spoilers" at the top of your post as a courtesy to those who haven't read the book, since there are a lot of readers who have enjoyed the ending, and your post takes away some of the surprise value. Maybe you could put it in with an edit?

I also wanted to say that I liked book 2 best of the three as well. Not coincidentally, it is the one I had the most time to write (20 weeks for book 2 vs 7 weeks for book 3 and 2 weeks(!) for book 1...why it all worked out this way is a long story). I also enjoyed writing that one the most...the factions were developed enough to let them breathe, but the challenge of building to a Big Finish not already detailed in the game didn't loom.

I wanted to mention that I had no intention of implying that some random scientist could have rigged the doomsday device at the end of the book. I actually went back and read the relevant sections and I noticed that a couple of things that had been in one draft got left out of the final book (as I rewrote large sections of the beginning). I meant to state that the Ideal, Gene, was the scientist who lead the singularity project, but that is not in there now. I also meant to imply that some time had gone by before the singularity reactor was interfaced with the planet busters, but you're right, it doesn't read that way. Ultimately, the whole thing was meant to be a nod to the chassis-system of the tech workshop.

If only I could "patch" the books...

Thanks again for your comments! Glad you liked book 2.

michael

Hydro · March 27, 2002, 18:52

Michael,

You are correct. I was inconsiderate of me, and I have edited my post.

Hydro