NORMAN SPINRAD



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Updated February 2009

A "Norman Spinrad Appreciation Group" has been started on Facebook

If you're interested, here's the link below. I believe you have to be a member of Facebook though.


Slow move to faster website--if it works

I've been maintaining a mirror website at the link below. It seems faster to download than the same thing here, and easier to edit and update too, once I mastered, more or less, the learning curve ,than the ancient program I seem trapped in here. So once Google catches up, assuming it ever does, this website will be migrating there. Until it does, I'll be trying to maintain and update both sites.


WELCOME TO YOUR DREAMTIME

I've just finished a new novel called WELCOME TO YOUR DREAMTIME, which I wrote without a contract with a publisher because it's by far the most radical and experimental book I've ever written, and I wasn't sure I could actually write such a thing until I did. It's written almost entirely in second person singular, that is, you, the reader are the hero and heroine, the viewpoint characters, of dreams that can be bought on chips and played back to you as you sleep. Among other things, it's the story of the rise, threatened fall, and redemption of this artform, and if it works maximally, it will leave at least some readers with the power of a form of lucid dreaming. Portions of WELCOME TO YOUR DREAMTIME have already been published as free-standing short stories in Baen's Universe and Weird Tales.

world rights to HE WALKED AMONG US and OSAMA THE GUN

sold to French publisher Fayard

I was approached by Fayard, and not the other way around. Fayard is a very major and very prestigious mainstream literary publisher, and they wanted to publish these novels in a major way, something I knew they were quite capable of doing. Having been unable to secure a major American publisher for HE WALKED AMONG US myself for years, and having actually been told that no major American publisher would be likely to publish OSAMA THE GUN under the present political conditions, I decided in the end to accept Fayard's offer and become a "French writer" in effect at least for these books, and maybe more. English language rights to HE WALKED AMONG US, which is being translated and scheduled for French publication in Spring 2009, and OSAMA THE GUN, which they will publish in 2010, will now be available through Fayard, as well as other translation rights. A portion of OSAMA THE GUN, which I've posted on Scribd (see link on this web page below) has of this writing been downloaded (in English)over 23,000 times.

VAMPIRE JUNKIES

the movie

Mathieu Carriere, Jacques Dorfmann, and I are co-producing a film adaptation of my short novel VAMPIRE JUNKIES, starring Mathieu Carriere as Count Dracula. Jerome Lefdup has made a short presentation video. The novella itself is available from Fictionwise, see link further below. We've got the cast, the director, the script, and so forth and are ready to go. But we've still got some room left for a few more investors. If you're interested, you can contact me at the email link directly above.


Ediciones B México esta publicando MEXICA en espanol-- en México

un lanzamiento especial


Descubre una visión única de la conquista del Imperio Azteca, Moctezuma, Cortés y los Conquistadores--el regreso de Quetzalcoatl y la caída del imperio Mexica marcan le muerte del Quinto Sol, una nueva era esta por comenzar.


En ingles--pardon my English

It would exhaust my meager Spanish to tell this. I went to Mexico for the launch of MEXICA there, and it was quite fantastic and wonderful. A launch event which you can see via the above link to the special web site Ediciones B has set up for the book. Over 30 interviews, large intitial printing. Ads, banners, actual billboards! However well this all does or does not do, Ediciones B did everything that a writer wants a publisher to do, and did it right. Wonderful warm people doing their things with more professionalism and panache than anything I've ever seen (or for that matter heard of) in the US. MUCHAS GRACIAS, AMIGOS!

DEUS X Now Available from Fine Tooth Press

Fine Tooth Press has published a new trade paperback edition of DEUS X


Now available from Amazon



RIDING THE TORCH

RIDING THE TORCH, my Jupiter Award winning short novel, is now availble directly from Renaisance ebooks and shortly from Fictionwise and elsewhere.



VOICE OVER radio play now on the Internet air

Broken Sea, a kind of web radio station, has produced VOICE OVER, which I indeed wrote as a very short radio play for Omni a long time ago.



Dona Sadock and Norman Spinrad on MNN TV in New York

Dona and I were interviewed on Channel 56 in New York. Below is a link to the complete half hour interview put on You Tube. The quality therefore is not as good as what was orginally aired.


FICTIONWISE

I've put e-versions of some of my stories, short novels, and my novel MEXICA on Fictionwise. Maybe more to come.


An experiment in distributed Web presence

MeTube on YouTube & Me on MySpace

I've set up a video channel on YouTube called MeTube. And then a page on MySpace which is at present more or less a mirror of it, but that may change as the experiment continues. What I'm trying to do is establish a web presence for my content which is multiplexly distributed in ways I haven't yet completely figured out yet--conceiving of YouTube, MySpace, this web page, as elements in an elusive whole. Here I will try to keep an updated list of what's been posted and where, and the links to the "MeTube" front page and that of my MySpace front page and where what may be found by going to them.



ONLY CHAOS IS REAL, music video made by me (on MeTube & MySpace) THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE RELOADED & SAVING STAR TREK (on MeTube & MySpace) OSAMA THE GUN--parts 1-4, the past, present, and a segue into the futrure of "the war on terror" (on MeTube & MySpace) BUG JACK BARRON--the (not)film--the inside story of why the movie hasn't been made despite dozens of producers and directors who have wanted to do it over the years. (on MySpace and MeTube, but with extra interacton on MeTube) WHY WE ARE REALLY IN IRAQ--how Bush used the evangelicals and they used him to create the mess, and how the former were conned big time if they believe in the Rapture. (on MeTube & MySpace)

OSAMA THE GUN part 5--the novel

The video tells the story of how my unpublished last-written novel OSAMA THE GUN came to be written, why I was compelled to write it even though I knew full well finding an American publisher to publish it, let alone an Arabic one, would be exceedingly difficult. I'm still having trouble finding a publisher with such cojones, which is one of the reasons I made the OSAMA THE GUN videos. All explained in this last OSAMA THE GUN VIDEO. Below, for convenience, direct links to the specific video on both YouTube and MySpace.

OSAMA THE GUN

the freeware portion

This is NOT the complete text of the novel OSAMA THE GUN ! This is the first third of the novel This portion of OSAMA THE GUN is Freeware I am making this portion available as freeware as widely as possible because publishers have been rejecting OSAMA THE GUN the completed novel for reasons I dare to suggest are largely political, and for reasons that will I believe be obvious to anyone who reads even this portion, they are the same reasons this novel needs to be published and read. If you want to know more about what this is all about and why the author of over 20 novels is doing a thing like this, go to my YouTube channel “MeTube” and have a look at the videos OSAMA THE GUN parts 1-5. As far as I’m concerned, this matter transcends the literary in the era in which we all find ourselves, and the reasons why publishers are frightened of publishing OSAMA THE GUN are the very reasons it should be read, and widely, in the west, and in the Islamic world. For those of you reading the portion and want to read the rest of the novel, I’m enlisting your aid. Redistribute this freeware file. Email me at: normanspinrad@hotmail.com And just say you want to read the novel. I’ll put all those emails in a file and keep a running count. If you want to castigate me for what I’m doing, email me and I’ll keep those in a file and count them too.




I've now put on Scribd the essay that led me to write OSAMA THE GUN and do the videos, KNOW YOUR ENEMY. This is freeware as a public service. Redistribution encouraged.


And also THE EXIT STRATEGY FROM IRAQ--From the Hotseat to the Catbird seat, in turn inspired by writing OSAMA THE GUN the novel and making the videos. What I believe is the only way out of this mess without a worse catastrophe. Public service freeware. Read it and see if you or anyone else has a better idea.


ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF--a video bibliography on YouTube

A narrated bibliography of all my novels, I think, illustrated by some of the covers. Hardly completist, but interesting, and something I think I'm going to make cross-platform use of. A CD of this would make a novel press and publishing presentation. I think maybe I'm inventing something here.


MARIJUANA DAY PARADE IN NEW YORK

My first attempt at video reportage on MeTube, using a phone camera, the New York version of World Marjiuana Day in New York.


I'm also a performer in a music video called VOTE FOR ME on YouTube! Check it out!


INDEX

GATEWAY TO THE INTERIOR

stories, radio play, cookbook, news, covers, more. Including my eyewitness account of 9/11. I was there, and up close.


MEXICA

Hardcover published by Little Brown in the UK in November 2005, in the US by Trafagar Square in April 2006, Abacus trade paperback published in the UK September 2006.




Film "coverage"

There's now a project to produce a film of MEXICA, and I was asked to write "coverage" in connection with it. This is a short document to be used to interest financers, actors, directors, etc. But it will also give readers of the novel a good idea of what they would be reading, so here it is.


FREE!!

Read, download, copy, distribute a sample of MEXICA


OSAMA THE GUN

I started a column for a website called Timessqquare.com which went nowhere. But the first column, TO KNOW YOUR ENEMY, was the direct inspiration for the novel I recently completed, OSAMA THE GUN. To learn how and why, click on the link to the column.


HE WALKED AMONG US

A VERY RADICAL EXPERIMENT

THE ENTIRE NOVEL NOW AVAILABLE AS SHAREWARE!!


The print-on-demand and pay for download editons of HE WALKED AMONG US did no better than most such editions, I'm still looking for a major conventional publisher,and still passionately believe in this novel. And so now I am making THE WHOLE NOVEL available free! Well not exactly.. It's shareware in the form of an RTF file, and it's an email attachment, not a download., and therefore much shorter than HTML or pdf, and not posted on this website. Anyone who wants one can email me at: normanspinrad@hotmail.com or use the direct email link at the top of this web site or the one below for convenience, and I'll send you HE WALKED AMONG US. Anyone and everyone who gets the HE WALKED AMONG US file by whatever means is encouraged to duplicate it, send it to friends and any other interested partties, post it on web sites and newsgroups, and take part in this experiment in the "viral distribution" of what may be the world's first shareware novel.

OR DOWNLOAD DIRECTLY FROM:

Since I'm encouraging website posting, here are some sites e from which HE WALKED AMONG US can be directly downloaded from:




AUTOBIOGRAPHY LAST UPDATE 2005

Gale Press commissioned my autobiography for an ongoing series of anthologies of writers' autobiographies, Part 1, and later commissioned the update, part two. This was here in 2 parts, now it's combined, cleaned up, and on scribd, where it can be downloaded in several formats. Very experimental form. Some day I hope to expand these Gale Press autobiographies into a full book. Space constraints mean that many many things have been left out.


"PIRATE THIS BOOK!"

Most newsgroups and websites pirating novels are not in it for the money since there isn't any. They see themselves as providing a service to readers. The writers of the books see it as theft. It seems to me this shareware viral distribution can bridge the gap. So all you pirates out there are invited to pirate HE WALKED AMONG US provided you post the complete file including the copyright and shareware notice. I'll even send you the file upon request and post its URL on your site here!

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

publishing, lies, and real estate Why I find myself trapped in the Big Apple


THE DRUID KING

Published in the UK by Little Brown in February 2003 and by Time Warner in mass market paperback in August 2004. Published by Alfred A. Knopf in the US in August 2003 and in Vintage trade paperback in August 2004.


Vintage trade paperback cover


Time Warner UK Mass Market Paperback Cover


I've put the full text of THE DRUID KING on line as shareware at Scribd, though the trade paperback is still available. Sort of an experiment to see how many people would be interested in an e-version under such conditions and whether anyone would actually volunarily pay anything for it.


Knopf in-house interview

More far-ranging that the usual in-house interview, though centered, of course, on THE DRUID KING


Und auf Deutsch bei Goldmann (12/002) als DER DRUIDENKOENIG erschienen


HE WALKED AMONG US

published in German as

DIE TRANSFORMATION

Heyne Verlag, my main German publisher for years, published HE WALKED AMONG US in German. And the German edition is the first edition

INTERVIEW AUF DEUTSCH

This is an extensive interview in German concerning HE WALKED AMONG US and other matters


BUG JACK BARRON


My classic novel of sex, politics, television, and immortality once more available in the US from Overlook Press.

(aussi nouvelle edition francaise chez J'ai Lu)

JACK BARRON ET L'ETERNITE

WOODY ALLEN interview

The full English language transcript of an interview with Woody Allen commissioned by the French newspaper LIBERATION and published in shorter French translation there in connection with the opening of his new film CELEBRITY. As you'll see, we sort of ended up interviewing each other. It's been suggested that some magazine might like to publish the English version, since it's appeared only in French. Rights are available. E-mail through this site. I also have a one hour tape of the complete interview. Near air-quality, done with pretty good equipment. Radio rights available.

LIVE PERFORMANCE AT THE TRANSMUSICAL FESTIVAL IN RENNES

I performed live as a vocalist, 4 pieces as lead, 1 as backing, at the Transmusical festival in Rennes. Packed house in club-like atmosphere, 500 +. Went over well. Tremendous rush! If you dare and are patient, you can hear it all via the web and MP3 by clicking the link below. And/or click on "More" for further details first.




BIBLIOGRAPHIES

ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY

the best I've found

BIBLIOGRAPHIE FRANCAISE par Jean-Jacques GIRARDOT tres complet


BIBLIOGRAPHIE AUF DEUTSCH


ITALIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY by Ernesto VEGETTI