[FRIAM] Devils Dictionary

[Steve Smith]

On the topic of recent books and local authors:

I just finished Steven Kotler's latest work of Fiction - "The Devil's 
Dictionary 
<https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250202093/thedevilsdictionary>".  
Kotler, who some of you may know lived here (near Chimayo on their 
Rancho de Chihuahua dog-rescue property) for about 10 years before 
moving on to build a house in the Tahoe area after finally hitting the 
big time working with the likes of Peter Diamandis.  He and Joy probably 
have 1000 rescued Chihuahuas on-property there.

    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250202093/thedevilsdictionary

Kotler is a "Friend of FriAM" (or at least SFx) though I don't know if 
he ever attended any coffee's or weigh in on the list. He's been a 
hyper-manic wildman since I met him at a neuroscience conference in 
2008, moving roughly twice as fast as anyone else I know.  I helped him 
build a BMX dirt-track in his back yard overlooked by a writers-shack he 
built at Rancho de Chihuahua (chronicled in his book A Small Furry 
Prayer <https://www.stevenkotler.com/book-pages/small-furry-prayer>).  
He did a reading for this one at SFx when it came out, some of you may 
have attended.   SteveG (and others here?) used to bomb moguls with 
Kotler.  I can't find he videos offhand but there are some from Furry 
Prayer era of him running arroyos with a whole pack of rescued chihuahua 
mixes.

Devil's Dictionary is a sequel to his "Last Tango in Cyberspace" of a 
few years ago.   Kotler weaves a LOT of contemporary topics from Climate 
Change to Gene Editing to Synthetic Drugs to Crypto into this 
Day-after-tomorrow CyberPunkEsque story with lots of thinly disguised 
references to his own life and work as well as to classic SciFi tropes.

I'm not sure I would recommend this book to most of the crue here, but 
definitely DaveW and maybe Marcus and Glen and Jon.  It focuses heavily 
on intuitive/empathic/flow experiences with drug-enhancement and cutting 
(bleeding?) edge tech with the kind of cacophonic wild ride that 
Cyberpunk usually carries with it.  I definitely enjoyed it myself.


On 4/25/22 9:43 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:
>
> Preston and a friend rode horses from the Mexican border at Rio Pedro 
> to Albuquerque and on to Santa Fe eventually. This is approximately 
> the route that Coronado took in 1540. Some parts of it were in 
> scary-rough mountains. He wrote a book about it:
> “Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of 
> Coronado”
>
> Abraham Lincoln’s name became well known in 1858 when he and the 
> incumbent senator for Illinois, Senator Douglas, had a series of 
> debates called the “Lincoln - Douglas debates” that most of us in the 
> US read about in school. This comes to mind whenever I think of 
> Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child debate plot points in their 
> collaboration.😏
>
> —Barry
>
> On 22 Apr 2022, at 14:53, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
>     I've recently read "Diablo Mesa" from Douglas Preston and Lincoln
>     Child. It is surprisingly good and combines Roswell, Aliens, FBI
>     and even the SFI :-) As you know Douglas Preston moved to Santa Fe
>     in 1986.
>     <https://www.prestonchild.com/books/diablomesa/diablo-mesa-a-nora-kelly-novel;art622,644>
>
>
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