Skye’s a comic book superhero with a gun in his hand and a gripe against his author. Every girl Skye’s ever dated is either dead or trying to take over the world, and in the series finale, Skye’s best friend kills him. Or so he thinks. The weapon meant to disintegrate Skye lands him in his author’s universe. With a shot at revenge.
Skye, meet Jace. Jacen Howard’s a brilliant #blerd math whiz and comics aficionado–but at his West Baltimore high school that’s a bad thing, and if the bullying isn’t bad enough, Jace’s cop-father regularly pisses off the neighbors. Jace doesn’t see himself as a hero; he’s just trying to survive.
Jace might be just the hero Skye needs.
But Skye won’t open up when Jace tries to ease him out of PTSD, and the author’s still torturing his friends. As Skye’s mood swings and nightmares escalate, Jace realizes that if he doesn’t uncover his roommate’s real identity soon, Skye will hurt someone–and Skye’s still deciding if murder will save his world, or damn his soul.
The novel Slow Up has a lot of things going on. While knowing these is not a necessity in enjoying the story, a deep background in the possible technologies and techniques involved will make it a much better read.
10. Rapid Serial Visual Representation
Can you read it?
It’s a speed-reading trick where text is parced into single point. Some speed readers like it, others do not.
9. Most of the IT Scenes Are Inspired by my Own Job at Wind Telecommunications HQ
Most of the tickets came in at a frantic pace, just like in the novel.
The scenes have nothing to do with real persons and situations. But the feeling of an uphill battle, that Sisyphean task of fixing hundreds of computers every day is there in Galene’s job.
8. For More on Nootropics, Check Out Reddit
Nootropics are real and have measurable effects. If you want to try them out, consult an expert. There is a lot of info online, but don’t push yourself too hard. Again, consult a doctor, not the marketing brochure.
Nothing is like the movie Limitless of course, that was a magic pill with insane powers. Real nootropics help you focus, help with creativity, memory.
7. Polyphasic Sleep is Real But You Should Take it Slow
Going directly at Uberman will most probably make you a zombieman.
We’ve all heard about geniuses who simply skipped sleep like Leonardo Da Vinci. That is not actually possible, of course, they only took short naps, powernaps as they call them now, to help their brain recharge.
My opinion is that getting good sleep is more important that gaining a few drowsy hours. I’ve seen that sleep deprivation cuts down on creative thinking. And there are serious medical risks involved.
The logical next step in athletic events is to have augmented races. Some augmentations actually give an advantage over other athletes, like in swimming. Especially with world-powers sending out troops at stupid wars and having young veterans come back disabled all the time, the day where augmentations are common-place is today.
The Cybathlon is not quite an Olympic-level event yet. But it showcases what can be done, and it won’t be long before augmented athletes can compete side-by-side with regular ones, like Pistorius did in the Summer Olympics of 2012. Yes, we know what he did afterwards, that’s not the point.
You can watch the scene mentioned by Gregoris in the novel, where the winner shows unprecedented evgenis amilla (fair game spirit) and swaps out his number with Oscar’s so he can be the winner:
5. Humans With Amplified Intelligence Could Be More Powerful Than AI
Frankly, a merge of mind and machine where a trained user can hook up and amplify his intelligence for short amounts of time is what we consider most plausible.
Another archetype of this is the Mentat from Dune. Human Computers that crave information and can help with decisions.
Wacky hair is a must
From David Lynch’s Dune, we got the Mentat Mantra (It’s not from the Frank Herbert novels but fits so well it got adopted instantly):
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It looks adorable. The real-live version, not so much.
External wombs are being researched and seem to work just fine. There are many real medical conditions where external wombs would be suitable. Of course, that opens up a can of worms, since humans could be raised from prime genetic material without people knowing. It’s almost like a dystopian sci-fi story.
Slow Up is Available to Read Now
Limitless meets Black Mirror in this novel that pushes the limits of a couple’s minds.
When Galene meets a man who’s only goal in life is to make his mind go faster, she ends up falling for him. But will she manage to keep the relationship going at the top of the glass tower, when in reality she’s too much of a slob and is bogged down with all her unfinished goals, when their age difference becomes too much of a problem, and when his work places them in the sights of an unforgiving huntress?
Do you want to know what’s next for the computer geek Galene? Do you wanna meet Artemis? Then read this bittersweet story in a world where thinking too swiftly can get you killed.
At Mythography we create mainly digital goods, so that is a decision that is not taken lightly.
DRM does not work as advertised, and results in a poor customer experience.
Piracy is of course a big issue, but we believe that people who want to support a project will happily buy the original. We do that all the time, we buy the original copy and support the creators.
We do not advocate piracy, nor are we against digital goods protection. We have been burned by DRM as consumers many times and we do not want a single one of our customers to feel the same way. DRM creates issues even with legitimate uses, transferring your original digital goods to a new device, reading the same book on your brother’s tablet, backing up the stuff you bought on your computer to do a format, not having access to workshop UGC on Steam etc. Even being offline on a trip or during a move is troublesome.
We are simply saying that our choice will always be DRM-free.
If you’re looking for more publishing houses that advocate DRM-free, Baen Books is one of the biggest with the same ideology. You bought it, you own it.
2016 UPDATE #2. We have partnered up with the amazing Streetlib team from Italy, for expanded Europe distribution. Their DRM is “soft,” just a watermark that never prohibits a user from copying his files into another of his devices. They assure us it is so and they seem to agree with us, but if anything changes we will make sure to address that.
2016 UPDATE #3. Regarding Audible. Before we get called out because of the Audible DRM, we need to explain ourselves on the audiobook issue. Audiobook production costs a few thousand, and Amazon’s ACX helps streamline that expensive process and reduce some of the costs through exclusivity. We hope the DRM it enforces on Audible products is not too damaging to the user experience. But you have to understand, that there is really no alternative to audiobook production and distribution. The only choices for now are either go with DRM and ACX, or simply not do audiobooks. We have made a decision to go with it on this particular channel, and are looking for any alternatives that might show up in the future.
2018 UPDATE #4. Streetlib has allowed even the watermark removed, so we’re going DRM-free even from that.
2018 UPDATE #5. After talking with our partners, the content provided through libraries does have DRM enabled. That allows “lending” of an ebook for a limited time, it gets disabled after the lending period is finished. That is the only way for libraries to enforce the distribution of ebooks through the system, giving out one copy per book only at the same time. Obviously this is a form of limiting DRM and it falls into the category we dislike, but it’s utilitarian.
2018 UPDATE #6. In this never-ending battle against this stupidity, Google Play books now shows our titles as DRM protected. However, our aggregator called PublishDrive assures us that it is simply a watermark, called soft-DRM.
2018 UPDATE #7. PublishDrive has removed all forms of DRM from our titles.
