From: Russell Whitaker (whitaker@extropia.corp.sgi.com)
Date: Tue Aug 27 1996 - 00:10:12 MDT
I asked Peter for permission to forward parts of a private
email message, and he has given permission. I've elided a
couple of parts, for privacy.
Russell
--- Forwarded mail from scary@pavilion.co.uk (Peter James)
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 14:52:46 +0100
To: whitaker@palladium
From: scary@pavilion.co.uk (Peter James)
Subject: Re: Host - an extropian novel
Dear Russell
It was a very nice surprise to get your eMail this morning. and thanx for
your very kind words about Host - I'm particularly delighted you spotted
the Extropy plug :-) You were incredibly helpful to me while I was writing
the novel and I'm extremely grateful to you. [SOME STUFF DELETED - REW]
Host was published in the US in hardcover by Random House this January, and
was also a Writers Guild book club main selection, and will be published in
paperback in the US early in 1997. It is being translated into some 22
languages, including Japanese, Italian, Russian and was a paperback
bestseller in the UK, reaching number One on some motorway and airport
lists and making the top ten in many other lists.
The UK paperback release was simulteneous with Host's electronic release:
It was published in the UK by Penguin as the world's first electronic novel
on two floppy discs and this attracted enormous publicity - I ended up
doing almost 200 interviews in October and November 1994 when it was
published here, including the Radio 4 morning news, The Today Programme,
which is Britain's biggest radio show and we had acres of press coverage.
Host is about a computer scientist who believes he could live for ever
through a combination of downloading his brain into a computer and having
his body frozen and did get me into a huge number of debates on the
subjects of cryonics and of immortality in general, and throughout the
whole period of the book's promotion, which still continues to this day, I
have vigorously fought the corner for the cryonicists and for all those who
believe that immortality will be achievable through science, and I have
argued both on the technical platform and on the philosophical and morality
ones. I'm a firm believer that the human race should not have to accept
death as inevitable.
Host is being made into a four-hour miniseries for ABC television. It will
be produced by Mick Garris (who recently directed Stephen King's The Stand
for ABC, and which achieved the highest ever audience rating in the US for
a miniseries) and is being scripted by Preston Sturges Jnr. There is no
start date yet, but ABC hope to be in production before the end of this
year.
[SOME MORE STUFF OF A PERSONAL NATURE DELETED - REW]
Warm regards.
Yours sincerely,
Peter James
http://www.pavilion.co.uk/peter-james/
Read "Virtually Alive" on:
www.bookshop.co.uk/features/author/james/anth.htm
"Outside of a dog, a book is about the best friend a man can have.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.*"
- Groucho Marx
* But not of course if you're reading Host on a laptop
---End of forwarded mail from scary@pavilion.co.uk (Peter James)
-- "Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee to truth, then inquire..." - Nietzsche Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker@sgi.com Webmaster, Silicon Junction Silicon Graphics, Inc. Mountain View, CA =============================================================== http://reality.sgi.com/whitaker
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