Author Carl Frederick writes that, “because of the current harsh climate in publishing, I’m employing the ‘Doctorow Maneuver’ for my new novel (i.e., let people read it for free and good things will happen).”
The first half of the novel, The Trojan Carousel, is up on his website, along with a promise to e-mail the second half to anyone who requests it. However, a reader with a Geek Card can just enter the card’s password and read the full novel on-line.
Frederick writes: “The novel is a cross between Lord of the Flies and Harry Potter where magic is replaced by theoretical physics. Because the book is for and about science geeks (and also because one of the kid characters in the novel had made up something very similar), I created the Geek Card: a wallet sized card holding geekish data—pi to 60 places, the standard model of elementary particles, a functioning slide rule, chemical and astronomical information, physical constants, a geek joke (the punch line is only understood by geeks) in Morse Code, etc. There’s a five-page illustrated users guide on my site. I’ll be glad to mail Geek Cards to anyone who sends a S.A.S.E. (the mailing address is on the site). I hope people will be as quick to embrace the novel as they’ve been to snap up the card.”
Frederick is a polymath, a professional physicist and writer, and his web site reflects his wide range of interests. He reports that over the next month or so, he plans to make all his professional short stories freely accessible on his site to anyone with a Geek Card. Currently available are Darkzoo (his “multiviewpoint online novel”); information about the robot he helped build and program for Omni magazine; the music of the fruit fly genome (with which he managed to crash Analog‘s web site); the story of the Martian Government in Exile; and more.