What is Edward M. Lerner reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Edward M. Lerner, author of Fools’ Experiments, Small Miracles, and the newly released InterstellarNet: Origins.

His entry begins:

Immersed as I am daily in science fiction, I take a break -- when I can -- with reading that is neither science nor fiction. Recently, that’s meant Eyewitness to History, edited by John Carey.

Carey has selected eyewitness accounts from around the world and spanning more than two millennia. He opens with Thucydides describing plague in Athens (430 BC) amid the Peloponnesian War and ends with James Fenton’s account of the (1986) ouster of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. What these accounts – more than 250 of them – share is vivid, first-hand narrative.

Eyewitness to History is a book to be sampled and savored, not read cover to cover. In part that’s because so much of history reflects man’s inhumanity to man. To proceed from one atrocity to the next would be too much. Trust me: you won’t soon forget...[read on]

Among the early praise for InterstellarNet: Origins:

“One of the most original, believable, thoroughly thought-out, and utterly fascinating visions ever of what interstellar contact might really be like.”
–Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog

“Lerner mixes physics, computer science, and economics into a series of very intellectually satisfying puzzles. Some of the puzzles involve understanding the alien, and some depend on understanding ourselves … A very satisfying read, especially for the intellectually inclined.”
–Mike Brotherton, author of Spider Star

“Edward Lerner takes us from a first SETI detection to full scale interstellar net economics, with thrills along the way. No one had thought through what a working interstellar net would be like. Lerner has the professional heft to make sense of it, tell a story, and make us care. Good stuff, told in clear, quick prose. A groundbreaking job!”
–Gregory Benford, author of Timescape

Learn more about the author and his work at his website Edward M. Lerner, perpetrator of science fiction and techno-thrillers, and blog SF and Nonsense.

The Page 99 Test: Small Miracles.

The Page 69 Test: Fools’ Experiments.

Writers Read: Edward M. Lerner.

-- Marshal Zeringue