Of soft spots ... and fleeting opportunitities

Updated January 2, 2023: the InterstellarNet series is temporarily out of print and electrons

Authors are frequently asked, "Which of your books is your favorite?" This is (as I've opined before) among our least favorite questions. It's about like asking a parent, "Which is your favorite child?"

With this year's release of The Best of Edward M. Lerner I've at least gained an answer to the related question, "Which of your books should I try?" -- and yet, that career-spanning short-fiction collection isn't the authorial "soft spot" of my subject line. 

It turns out I have, if not one favorite from among my books, a deep connection with a trio of them. This came to my attention when -- with short notice -- I was told my three-book InterstellarNet series is going out of print (and electrons). At year's end. Yup, mere days from now.

Hence, the "fleeting opportunity" also mentioned in my subject line. Unavoidably, this is a commercial announcement. While I'm confident these books/ebooks will be reissued sometime, I can't speak to when.  

Each InterstellarNet novel offers an entirely different take on First Contact -- and yet, all three novels interrelate. Perhaps the essential reason for my attachment to InterstellarNet is the obvious one. A story premise whose first glimmerings shaped a single novelette had such potential that I couldn't set it aside until three novels later. 

Along the way, precursor stories to two of the novels collected, among their recognitions, my first appearance in a year's best anthology and a Hugo Award nomination. One precursor was serialized -- as the lone work of fiction -- in the proceedings of a conference of the UN's International Telecommunications Union. (And aptly so. The ITU was inspiration and role model for my Interstellar Commerce Union.) Oh, and InterstellarNet: Enigma, the third and concluding novel of the series, was a Prometheus Award nominee and winner of the inaugural Canopus Award for a novel "honoring excellence in interstellar writing."

Until year's end, when InterstellarNet begins its unanticipated hiatus, these are the novels (the titles link to Amazon):

InterstellarNet: Origins. We are not alone. Now what? (Other than a cascade of crises, ever more daunting, to bedevil an expanding number of interstellar civilizations for generations.)

InterstellarNet: New Order. Humanity is about to discover that meeting aliens face to face is very different -- and a lot more dangerous -- than long-distance chicanery.

InterstellarNet: Enigma. Humanity once feared that we might be alone in the universe. Now we know better -- and there are far worse things than being alone.

InterstellarNet: Complete. All three novels in a bargain ebook omnibus.

“Edward M. Lerner’s InterstellarNet is one of the most original and well-thought-out visions of an interstellar civilization I’ve ever seen.”-- Stanley Schmidt, Author of Argonaut

“Lerner’s world-building and extrapolating are top notch.” -- SFScope

“An excellent series.” -- Galaxy’s Edge

“… A well researched hard science fiction series. Building from today’s technology into a believable tale of the not-so-distant future of characters, ships and planets, I really enjoyed it.” -- Abyss & Apex