About The novel
A loose band of bloggers are forced to leave the safe confines of their Internet bubble when one is shipwrecked on a sacred South Seas isle while others try to keep a manipulative high-tech CEO from gaining control of all information, past and present and future.
One part wry, two parts offbeat, three parts fanciful, Thinks Out Loud goes where no blog has gone before.
Thinks Out Loud—the unconventional novel written in blog form features:
· Isaac, a burned-out blogger who trades in RSS feeds for South Seas adventure and romance
· Tallboy, a former barista with big dreams of blogging for a high-tech startup
· Prime Mover, the charismatic CEO of AltaSystemics, considered visionary by some, diabolical by others, with a penchant for improv
· Emily, a perceptive college student who dares to challenge Prime Mover
· Vaitiare, a Polynesian princess trying to keep her island from becoming the next overrun tourist destination
· The Morse brothers, Word War II vets and amateur physicists who are playing around with a special kind of time travel
· Not to mention, the others—students, islanders, Sensates—their destinies interlaced, all centered around the blog Thinks Out Loud.
EXCERPTS FROM THINKS OUT LOUD
Survival 101
Entry No. 538 | Posted: Oct. 2, 2011
Isaac: A surprise. I was storing my personal-sized life raft away from the surf the other day, so I turned the craft over to examine the underside. When I flipped it back, I noticed a small brown object had fallen out. A water-protected book. How had I missed that? Apparently it was lodged in a pocket with a flap. The book: La Livre de la Survivance (The Book of Survival) by Antoine Cabriolet. Granted it was in French, but there were some useful line drawings as well.
Although my French consists of two years of college-level coursework, many years ago, I gave it a try. The “make a spear” section (“Faire une lance”) was pretty rudimentary. The book contained some good ideas. Like “Ne pas panique!” Also, based on a drawing, one afternoon I made a gigantic ‘HELP’ sign in the sand, each letter fifty feet long—in case a plane flew overhead. I also included, to be fair, in slightly smaller letters underneath: “Aidez!” This is funny: I drew the huge letters on the wrong side of the high tide marker, and they were washed away by the next morning.
There was also a section on harvesting coconuts, something I’d been unable to do. Again, the drawing helped. I’d tried throwing rocks to dislodge the fruit, but even when I hit the coconut, nothing happened. Now I learned how to shimmy up the tree, grab a coconut, turn it until its stem broke and then let it fall to Earth. Back home, coconut tree climbing would be promoted as the latest exercise craze: work the whole body!
Question: Do I want to be rescued?
To be continued…
[*Message sent via DrumBeat, island-to-island communications.]
Beyond the cloud environment?
ENTRY NO. 561 | POSTED: October 19, 2011
Eddie: Okay, back. tb has thrown himself into his new job, so I’ll relay what he’s told me. The employees refer to AltaSystemics as The Hive. (Does that mean there are workers and drones? What about a Queen Bee? I guess the Prime Mover guy fits that role.)
Dress is “obligatory casual” which means most of them are in khaki or other light colors. tb says one group is dressed all in white robes. He’s not sure what they do.
tb says he’s impressed by the company’s focused workplace culture and the employees’ unified identity. What he’s still processing is exactly what AltaSystemics does.
I don’t know if this helps, but this is from the company website:
“AltaSystemics: developing sensate clairsentience systems for the ultimate in collective consciousness paradigms.”
“Beyond the cloud environment with quantum/flux engagement.”
“Psychometric applications for post-sapien modalities.”
And: “Incorporating synthesis rather than eclectic derivation to form the basis of our openness to social, cultural and para-digitalistic phenomena.” That one sounds more like it was pulled from academia.
Tomorrow, I’m going to bring up their site in my History of High-tech Seminar and see if anyone can figure out what’s going on over at AltaSystemics.
Time to check Newser.
Reviews of “Thinks Out Loud”
Queen Anne author's debut novel eschews traditional formatting / Queen Anne & Magnolia News, July 6, 2017
It all started as a personal blog.
For more than a year, Martin Perlman published his musings two or three times a week online; social commentary, cultural references, and the like.
Then it became something more.
The result is the Queen Anne resident’s debut novel, “Thinks Out Loud,” a story that follows a burned-out blogger who washes up in the South Pacific, and a group of characters at odds with a high-tech CEO with murky intentions.
How does a blog become a book?
"Perlman's metafictional approach leaves both his in-book blog readers and actual readers guessing what is and is not real. . .fans of stories set in the tech world, residents of the Seattle area, and readers who enjoy offbeat and original stories will be entertained."
--Publishers Weekly, July 2018
"In Thinks Out Loud: A Blog at First, Seattle author Martin Perlman writes what may be the most accurate portrait of Seattle in the present moment. Evoking the hard sci-fi stylings associated with fellow Seattle author Neal Stephenson, Perlman uproariously skewers start-up culture in a novel that will strike true to any Seattleite. This form-breaking novel is written in blog format, hence the subtitle, and even features a villainous CEO who, some may argue, bears a resemblance to Jeff Bezos."
--Review by Third Place Books, Ravenna, August 24, 2017
Reader Reviews from Amazon
I haven't read fiction in years. This was a wonderful break. My family was surprised to see how I mowed through a book. I loved the unique format of telling a story through a blog. The story line kept you guessing and it all came together at the end. I really do want to see this in a movie. Nice work. --Doug Howell
Thinks Out Loud is different from any novel you've read before -- a whole new genre of blog-based fiction. Great characters, a twisting and slightly twisted plot, and an original format that keeps you reading one entry after another after another. Opening Perlman's book is like opening an exquisite package of potato chips. You think you'll only eat a few and then end up devouring the entire bag. It's so much fun ping-ponging from fog-bound Seattle to Polynesia, all without ever leaving the digital confines of Issac's blog.--Author Mark Baker
In Thinks Out Loud, Martin Perlman delivers an addictive story in a truly novel form: a series of blog entries that are in turns humorous, thoughtful, and dramatic. Perlman adroitly delivers a satire of our out-of-control love affair with instant communication, while simultaneously inviting the reader to consider their relationship to our current technology and whether it makes life more or less meaningful. Perlman has wrapped into this construct an endearing cast of characters and a contagious plot, which makes the book all the more readable.--Peter Moser
