I think we can all agree that I’ve been admirably restrained with respect to talking about my upcoming book before it even appears. (Maybe you don’t think so, but believe me — I’ve been restraining myself.) Die-hards have been able to follow the excitement at the Facebook page, where fascinating details about cover blurbs and review copies have been politely sequestered.
All that is about to end soon! Yesterday I received in the mail an actual copy of the hardcover, a tangible artifact testifying to the reality of this long-anticipated event. Here it is, rubbing shoulders with a few other well-known bestsellers.
The official release date is January 7. Yes, there will be a Kindle edition; at some point later in January there will even be an audio book. And I’m certainly not going to stop you from ordering it. But my publisher tells me that what would be really great is if a bunch of people ordered it exactly on January 7. So that’s when I’ll really be encouraging you.
Even after the book is out, I don’t want to turn the blog into all book, all the time. But I do want to try a book club experiment, where we go through individual chapters, one week at a time, with me revealing some of the thought processes that went into each chapter and all of us having a back-and-forth discussion. Should be fun!
No formal book tour, but I’ll be doing a few readings and events. Check the Facebook page or book web page for more.
December 7th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I was quite disappointed to search for the book on Audible (I figured I’d put it on my wish list) and come up with a book on how to rediscover the ageless purpose of God instead.
December 7th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I’m excited to read your book!
December 7th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Will the audio book be read by you?
December 7th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Nope — they got a professional.
December 7th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Alright, the Bible is an important historical text, but the Da Vinci Code… right next your your book? Who’s coffee table is this?
December 7th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Wait a while before you do “…where we go through individual chapters, one week at a time, with me revealing some of the thought processes that went into each chapter and …” so that many people have a chance to read it.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Yee-ha! I’m not sure I can wait a month to order the Kindle version, even knowing I won’t be able to start reading it before the release date. In order to help me and your legions of (im)patient fans, is the idea behind waiting until 1/7 that only orders in a limited timeframe count for bestseller list purposes on the NY Times, Amazon, etc.?
December 7th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Jud, that’s exactly right. The more people buy the book on the first day, the more likely it is to get a good Amazon rank, so the more likely it is that other people will see and buy it, boosting the rank further… That’s the theory, anyway.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Sean, if I pre-order ‘From Eternity to Here’ at Amazon, will that be counted as a Jan 7th first-day order? I decided to buy it after hearing your May 29th, 2009 “Dark Forces” presentation in the Virtual World (VW) of Second Life. For interested people, here’s the MICA [Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics] page linking to your slideset and audio from that talk – http://mica-vw.org/wiki/index.php/MICA_Seminars.
Paradox Olbers in SL/Spike R. MacPhee in RL
MICA member
December 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Sorry if I’m too hard in case but here is the deal: you promise to try a book club experiment each week or month, I promise I’ll buy the book on January 7.
Nothing personnal.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Paradox, pre-orders count right away, they don’t accumulate in anticipation of the release date. I certainly won’t discourage anyone from ordering the book right now, but the impact of such orders decays away gradually over time.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Why isn’t your copy of Sarah Palin’s book in the picture?
December 7th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I can’t believe you used the wrong Amazon link to your own book.
http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Here-Rediscovering-Ageless-Purpose/dp/1434768708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260224951&sr=8-1
Also, you’ve been spelling your own name wrong.
December 7th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Sean, how many promotions for your book do your faithful blog readers have to endure before we each get a free copy?
December 7th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
The distribution of free copies runs contrary to my pecuniary interests.
December 7th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Perhaps it could be renamed From Eternity To Here To The Bank?
Gotta love modern science.
December 7th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Just curious, how did the time and effort investment in writing this book compare to the investment in writing the Spacetime and Geometry textbook?
December 7th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Have a specific question about your book.
About 30 years ago, Paul Davies wrote a technical book, The Physics of Time Asymmetry, which I read with great interest. He sketched in detail the arrows of time: cosmological, thermodynamical, electrodynamical, and quantum mechanical, but I don’t believe a hierarchy was ever asserted.
If I understand your thesis correctly, you go with the thermodynamic one. If so, in what order do the other ones descend, or are they applicable only in limited physical contexts ?
Thanx !
December 8th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Hello Sean,
What I know is that it is not very easy to sell some serious books, and for this we can refer to the story of Descartes for example ; but the fact that you are in a university should help normally, it could even help a lot. Good luck !
December 8th, 2009 at 5:16 am
Boo DaVinci Code. Might as well put Twilight on there…jkjk
I’m excited for your book release! Definitely put a reminder (on facebook or here) and I’ll help your ratings.
December 8th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Isn’t the fact that many scientists would rather focus time and energy on writing books about general science instead of actual research an indication their field is hopelessly stuck?
December 8th, 2009 at 6:50 am
Eagerly anticipating. I pre-ordered a while back.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:07 am
Anton, in both cases the book-writing timescale was between one and two years. The textbook took more time (there were a lot more equations), but spread out over two periods of energetic work.
Jimbo, the interesting arrows of time to me are the ones that actually involve irreversibility, so the cosmological one doesn’t count. The others, I believe, all reduce to the thermodynamic arrow. But it’s not easy to prove that beyond reasonable doubt.
December 8th, 2009 at 9:17 am
I do plan on purchasing and reading your book, and I hope it is more readable than Barbour’s “End of Time” which was, basically, unreadable. Try though I might, I could penetrate his prose or his ideas. In other posts, I believe you stated that you do not concur with his hypothesis. Do you address Barbour’s idea at all in your book (partly I’m hoping someone else will explain Barbour’s idea to me)?
December 8th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Can the audio book please be narrated by Salman Rushdie?
December 8th, 2009 at 9:56 am
“Arrow of Time” = irreversibility of causality.
Ho hum; what’s the fuss?
Only requires one sentence, not a book.
December 8th, 2009 at 11:30 am
The title “From Eternity To Here” is actually a logical contradiction. Which is easily proved
Consider “From Here to Somewhere in the infinite Future”:
Make yourself immortal (no matter what happens to the universe) and count the years you live from now on: 1, 2, 3, .. n, n+1..
Now it is a fact that adding 1 to any finite number is still a finite number. So even though you live forever your age will always remain finite (for all future!). An infinite amout of time cannot pass.
You will never reach a point in time where you can say: My age is infinite!
However, the title suggest that an infinte amount of time has already passed, which is clearly impossible. Time is unable to cover infinite intervals.
December 8th, 2009 at 11:48 am
@CarlN #27
The set of all integers is infinite, even though it is countable. In fact, you can count the set of all positive and negative integers with just the set of positive integers. Playing with infinity is a dangerous game.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Metre, you are playing with the mathematical infinite, not me. I carefully restrict myself only to physical time
December 8th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
“Paradox, pre-orders count right away, they don’t accumulate in anticipation of the release date. I certainly won’t discourage anyone from ordering the book right now, but the impact of such orders decays away gradually over time.”
Sean are you saying that pre-orders are overdamped solutions of your checking account oscillator?
December 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Hm, a book with an illogical and unphysical title. The content might be the same.. Guess I’m not buying it
December 9th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
@CarlN #29:
In post #27, you used counting and adding to illustrate your argument, hence you invoked the mathematical infinity. Your argument is just a variation of Zeno’s paradox, and is invalid for the same reason – you cannot apply the logic of the finite to the infinite. Google up Hilbert’s paradox to see how finite logic does not apply to the infinite.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Dear Metre, sorry but I did not invoke the mathematical infinity. And Zeno and Hilbert are clearly irrelevant. You simply do not reach the infinite by keep adding 1 at a time to a finite number even if you do it forever. Proof: There is no finite number n such that n+1 = oo
December 9th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
@CarlN
OK, if that’s what you want to believe, there’s no point to further discussion.
December 9th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Why don’t you formulate proofs then? Using Hilbert or whatever? Impossible if you ask me but you know better?
December 16th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
As usual I win the argument
But it is sad to see that the only carry-over left from religion, “Eternity”, still occurs in physics.
December 28th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Wow, @CarlN I think the whole point of the title is that it is slightly illogical and paradoxical. If you see the book on a book shelf the point is to think, hmm that is interesting, why don’t I see what it is about, and perhaps you shouldn’t comment on how a title is stupid before reading the book; there might be something in the book that explains it. Would you say that saying from here to eternity is a reasonable thing to say? Because by your logic that is also completely a false claim. The whole idea of “infinity” is something that is slightly vague and undefinable. By some views, from 0 to 1 is infinite because an infinite amount of numbers is contained, yet there is certainly a beginning and an end.
Also, @metre, invoking Zeno and Hilbert is completely reasonable.
P.S. I got your back Sean… Can’t wait for the book… I love the title
December 29th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Hey Sean,
Question, where can I get a blow-up beach ball of the universe??
Just saw the Wired article about you