Wave Series Books Compared to Online Version

[Laura]

If you read all of "The Wave" series and ALL of "Adventures with Cassiopaea" series and ALL of the comet series linked on the left of the sott page, and click some of the links, you will have read pretty much 8 volumes of The Wave.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

If you read all of "The Wave" series and ALL of "Adventures with Cassiopaea" series and ALL of the comet series linked on the left of the sott page, and click some of the links, you will have read pretty much 8 volumes of The Wave.

Not only, that, you've read more than the 8 volumes! ;)

Here's a breakdown: The Wave, as it is online, makes up volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 (to be published in book form later this year). The Adventures Series online makes up volumes 5, 6, and 7. However, the Adventure Series also has a few chapters that are extended versions of sections in Secret History.

 

[davey72]

So,will "the wave 7",for example be on the net,cause i have been waiting for new chapters 4 quite a few yrs.or am i missing something?

 

[Approaching Infinity]

So,will "the wave 7",for example be on the net,cause i have been waiting for new chapters 4 quite a few yrs.or am i missing something?

Wave 7 is the last chapters of the Adventures Series (the ones on John Nash, Ira Einhorn, psychopaths, game theory, etc.). Wave 8 is the last chapters of the Wave as it appears online. Except for edits and material that Laura has added to the already existing chapters in the book versions of the series, there have been no new chapters published in the Wave since its original online publication.

 

[Eva]

My christmas present for myself this year were the first 4 volumes of the Wave along with High Strangeness.
Although I had read the full online version at least twice and then also re-read specific pages countless times I can say that reading the paperback was a wholely different thing.

Maybe it's just me, and the fact that I read too many books in online form the past year but having the book in my hands felt incredible. Plus, I think the commentaries by Laura are slightly different? A lot more explanatory, even the writing style seems to flow differently in a way - again it may be just me, reading under different emotional circumstances.

Another thing is that some of the transcripts are slightly different, they are either longer with more detail or missing a couple of words. The missing words are funnily enough words that made me cringe when I read them at the online version and I was delighted to see them worded differently as they are in the book.

One thing I can safely say is that I would recommend buying the books wholeheartedly.

 

[Laura]

One of the big differences between publishing online and in book form, is that I feel that I must include material that was previously only referenced and hyperlinked. I figured that, on the web, the person can just click the link, see what it says, come back to reading.

But in a book, that option is not available. So one of the things we did was to include some of the hyperlinked material inline in the text OR in appendices or footnotes. We also made some quotations more complete for similar reasons.

There were also instances where I would make a side comment with a hyperlink and in a book, that wasn't okay. So I had to do some "fill-in" writing, explaining something that was previously only mentioned and linked.

I also corrected some things based on new information that has come to hand since the Wave was written, but not much of that. I've made similar corrections online.

Basically, the whole thing is organized differently. You go through the Wave up to the point that Vinnie Bridges enters the picture (more or less), then we divert onto Adventures which not only covers the Bridges drama, but a lot of stuff about psychopathy that we learned as a consequence of Bridges and gang, and then come back to the conclusion of The Wave.

Actually, though there are repetitions of material in Grace (that is now online) in the Wave, it is probably a good idea to read Grace first. I suppose we'll bring out a new edition now that it is online. I like to give the reader the option of reading it free, having a book in the hand, and of course, now, we are producing Kindle books.

We've got several other books of material collected together that is being edited into book format (as described above where you have to include stuff that you otherwise just linked to) and will be coming out as soon as we can deal with it.

I like books to be topical, but the problem is, most of the stuff I write about overlaps in different directions, so sometimes, it is necessary to repeat in one book about a different topic, things that are in another book about a different topic.