04/27/03: Check out my piece on new private space ventures! The story will appear in next week's Newsweek. (Photo courtesy of JP Aerospace.)
04/23/03: Great news! Gearheads is a Book Sense 76 Pick. Check out the list. Book Sense is a coalition of independent booksellers around the country and I'm told that making the list is an honor!
04/20/03: I've posted some links to photos from the Gearheads book party last weekend. What can I say about it? It was a blast. We had robots, Segways, perfect weather after a day of rainstorms, Marc Thorpe singing a musical number, and a really fearsome fire-breathing blender. It was a fitting end to my meager book tour. I only hope that the world of competitive robotics continues to thrive, and that its participants and fans consider Gearheads an accurate and interesting history of its first phase.
04/07/03: I attended the annual BattleBots IQ tournament on Mare Island in Vallejo, Calif. today. There were 40 high school teams and their robots from around the country, and the excitement among the kids and their teachers was palpable. Last week, I visited the San Jose regional of the FIRST competition. It too was a wonderful display of inspiration, education and robotics.
The more I see, the more faith I have that robotic sports are here to stay.
Meanwhile, this week could be my last on official book promotion duty. This Wednesday, 12:30 p.m., I have a reading at the Stacey's bookstore on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. Then on Saturday night, we have the book party and robot extravaganza at Fort Mason. Don't miss this - it will be a glorious mixture of the various communities, and their creations, in the robot building universe.
03/24/03: What a trip! The reading in New York last Wednesday was great - a full house, with lots of familiar faces. Thanks to everyone who came. And the Newsweek party in Boston on Thursday was also much fun, with an ant-weight arena provided by local robot builders, and a Segway from Tobias Johnson of the Segway Users Group. Much thanks to all and particularly to Tobias, who had the patience to satisfy everyone's curiosity about the Segway!
03/16/03: I'm off to New York City next week for the first of several book readings. It feels a bit strange to be talking to about things like robot competitions as the country is poised to go to war. Still, amid all the war noise, the book has gotten some good attention this week. I have a story on robots and a short book excerpt in this week's Newsweek magazine. I also got a great review on the front page of the book section of the San Francisco Chronicle today.
03/02/03: We have confirmed sightings of Gearheads in bookstores nationwide! It seems the book will be stocked in different locations, depending on the bookstore. Computers, robotics, electronics... those are all possibilities. Hopefully you will not need carabiners and crampons to get to those parts of the store. I do not believe it is illegal to take a few copies and deposit them near the front! Well, it's not illegal if you don't get caught.
02/25/03: Even though the book won't be in bookstores for another week, it's now available for purchase on RobotBooks.com, Amazon and B&N.com. I've also posted to this site my scheduled book signings!
02/23/03: This weekend I attended the kickoff of DARPA's Grand Challenge. In March of 2004, the military will award 1 million bucks to the makers of an autonomous vehicle that wins a race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in under 10 hours. The challenge is indeed grand--even the DOD itself doesn't currently have any robotic assets that could perform such a feat. And yet hundreds of computer scientists, off-road racing enthusiasts and robot hobbyists showed up to learn about the rules, quiz the planners, and form teams. I predict that progress toward the goal will be slow for the first few years - with most of the ingenuinty directed toward finding creative loopholes in the rules. Still, some participants are confident they can field a solid entrant. We'll see.
02/10/03: I returned from Steel Conflict in L.A. yesterday. The continuing enthusiasm of the gearhead community is a hugely encouraging thing in the post-Battlebot world. And the fights were, as usual, great. But perhaps a little more thought could have been given to putting on a good show for spectators, and to marketing the event. All those empty seats were a daunting thing, particularly when you walked outside and saw, off in the distance, folks hanging from the packed bleachers watching the drag racing championships...
02/05/03: On Monday, I got ten copies of my first book. It wasn't quite as transendental an experience as I'd imagined. I got copies, or at least offered them, to Marc Thorpe, Trey Roski and Greg Munson, Mark Pauline and Steve Plotnicki. The reactions I got were, in each case, unexpected. So far though, I'm heartened by the feedback. Coming soon: a report from this weekend's Steel Conflict, where hot-off-the-presses copies of Gearheads will be given as prizes to the competition winners.
01/30/03: I should be getting copies of the actual book this weekend. Very excited about that! I'm also starting to think about what a book party in the San Francisco Bay Area should look like; hopefully something that brings together the robotic combat and SRL crowds - with a lot of noisy, kick-ass robots on display. If you have any ideas about this, email me.
01/24/03: Today I booked a ticket to travel down to Steel Conflict in February. I'm looking forward to my first robot competition since I finished Gearheads nearly a year ago. I'm thinking about writing a new chapter to the book - on the formation of the RFL, the ongoing legal dispute between Robot Wars and Battlebots, and other new developments. I would make it available to interested readers on this web site, and in person when I'm promoting the book.
01/23/03: Pre-taped a segment with Bill Gurstelle, author of "Building Bots," for air on Dr. Moira Gunn's syndicated radio show, Tech Nation in March.
01/21/03: Gary Pini of Paper Magazine called me today. Gary used to work with Steve Plotnicki at Profile Records and was key in forging the initial Robot Wars partnership with Marc Thorpe back in 1994, which basically initiated the sport of robotic combat. Gary said he saw the Gearheads review in Kirkus and acquired a galley copy through Simon & Schuster's PR office. He said he read it in one sitting and really liked the book, and thought I was basically fair to all the disputing parties--which was nice to hear.
01/20/03: Got a color copy of the full book jacket today--the front and back. I like the front and am delighted we got the rights to use a photo of Mark Setrakian's Mechadon, an elegant, sophisticated artbot. The back, though... they only fit in two of the four quotes we acquired (all four rotate on the home page of this site.) And for some reason they used a bio that I included in my book proposal nearly two years ago. It's too late to change now though: the book is being printed.
Stay tuned for more updates on the iminent publication of Gearheads.
You can email me at: brad@gearheadsthebook.com.
