“When I finished the first draft, in November ’97, Wired suddenly folded their book division. I got to keep most of the advance. But now it was hard to find a publisher for this odd orphan book. Finally David Hartwell of Tor picked it up early in 1998 and I even got another (smaller) advance.” (Rudy Rucker, in Broderick, D. (2000). Transrealist fiction: Writing in the slipstream of science. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. P. 169)
Wow, that sounds really hard. I wish Rucker had shared more about how incredibly super-arduous it was to get a second publisher for his book during that terribly long period from Nov 1997 to early 1998. This saga reminds me of Dr. Zhivago, really. And then he had to stoop all the way to have a book published by well-known bottom-of-the-barrel Tor. Truly, it’s a wonder any human being is capable of bearing up under these tremendous strains.