Friday, April 6, 2012

How many Russians does it take to write a SF novel?

A few thousand, according to a literary experiment by my fellow writer Andrei Levitsky.   
Here's the Invasion cover art by A. Rudenko
He wrote his recent novel, Invasion. Moscow 2016 (Nashestvie), together with as many fans and beginning writers who co-authored his book online. Andrei posted the work in progress at Russia's biggest writing site, SamIzdat http://samlib.ru , inviting all his readers to offer their suggestions of various story details and its further development.

 This Russia-based Babel-story project proved a complete success. Says Andrei Levitsky:

"You'd think that writing the book itself would be easier, wouldn't you? Quite the opposite. It was exhausting. I had to work to a strict deadline: a week to discuss all the possible plot alternatives with the readers, and another week to actually write it up.  Good job I had a lot of co-authoring experience when there's no way you can let the other writer down or take a sabbatical waiting for inspiration to come.
Here's the Invasion -2 cover art by A. Rudenko

Working on Invasion proved much harder than I initially expected. For that reason, my next novel, The Anomals , took much longer to write: I needed a break after the Invasion marathon."

Andrei and I have co-authored several books of the TechnoTma series. 



4 comments:

  1. Well done! I bet many Russians in San Francisco would love to read this novel... Wish you more success in writing!

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    1. Thank you!
      Suggest reading Memoria. A Corporation of Lies, the book's already out. You can get it on amazon.com

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    2. Thanks for the suggestion. I would definitely get a copy.

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    3. It will be great :) May be write review on amazon, when read the book?

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