Levels: The Host
Authors: Peter Emshwiller
Tags: #Bantam Books, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Class Warfare, #Manhattan, #The Host, #Science Fiction, #Levels, #Adventure, #Thriller, #Novel, #sci-fi, #Dystopian, #Emshwiller, #Wrong Man, #Near-Future, #Action, #skiffy, #Futuristic, #Stoney Emshwiller, #Body Swapping, #Bantam Spectra, #New York, #Cyberpunk, #Technology, #SF, #Peter R. Emshwiller
Praise for Levels: The Host
“Emshwiller can build suspense, and has a good sense of ironic fitness.”
–Locus Magazine
“The book has a certain page-turning power. It kept me reading to find out what would happen to poor Watly Caiper….”
–Amazing Stories
“[Emshwiller] handles [his story] masterfully and with a sense of theater that seems to both emerge naturally from his background and bode well for future dealings with Hollywood. This one could make a very good movie.”
–Analog
“There has always been a small, underappreciated group of imaginative fiction writers… who deal with real, human characters. Now, with his first novel,
The Host
, Peter Emshwiller has joined that group….
The Host
’s vivid characters… its playful take on the English language, and its feeling of ‘could be-ness’ will leave you wanting more. Which is good, because a sequel is due out next year.”
–Gallery Magazine
“Other novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim this year included:…
The Host
by Peter R. Emshwiller (Bantam Spectra)…”
–The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection
“…Emshwiller is unafraid to wrestle with and take bold stands on controversial moral issues…”
–Raymond’s Reviews
The best cyberpunk works are distinguished from previous work with similar themes by a certain style… There is often a sense of moral ambiguity; simply fighting “the system” (to topple it, or just to stay alive) does not make the main characters “heroes” or “good” in the traditional sense. [Emshwiller’s
The Host
is one of the] classic Cyberpunk novels which [is now] out-of-print.
–Lincoln City Libraries BookGuide
“… [Nothing] can quite compare to wandering the dusty shelves of a secondhand bookstore and discovering a hidden gem, wedged deep within a stack of well-read paperbacks…
The Host
and [its sequel]
Short Blade
offer a significant level of world-building, social commentary, and gender exploration.”
–Beauty in Ruins
LEVELS
book one
THE HOST
Peter R. Emshwiller
The Art of Persuasion Group
Dedication
Dedicated to my incredible poovus, Margaret, for all her help, support, and love; my wonderful new family, Rich, Vicky, Melissa, and Mary Elizabeth; my great and talented sisters, Eve and Susan; and both my mothers, the genius Carol and the late, great Ed. (Miss you, Dad.) And to Amy, for thinking I had
something here.
Who says there’s no such thing as
family anymore?
LEVELS: THE HOST
Published by The Art of Persuasion Group / July 2014. ISBN 978-0-9906073-0-4
Copyright © 2014 by Peter R. Emshwiller.
Cover art copyright © 2014 by Peter R. Emshwiller and Margaret
Mayo McGlynn.
All rights reserved.
First published as a Bantam Spectra Book / May 1991
(ISBN 0-553-289M-5
,
OPM 0987634321)
Original copyright © 1991 by Peter R. Emshwiller.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the author.
AUTHOR’S FORWARD 25th Anniversary Edition
(with extra butter)
C
orny and clichéd as it sounds, I first conceived of the basic setting for this book while sitting on a park bench, sketching on a paper napkin. It was springtime in Manhattan in the mid 1980s. I drew a picture of what was right in front of me: a New York City street scene stretching off into a distant vanishing point, dead center on the paper. I stared at the sketch and, after a while, added a horizontal line right smack-dab through the middle of it at the fifth-story level. It was a classic “light-bulb” moment.
Soon after that, I began working on this novel. I started by mulling. And mulling. Mulling in the shower, mulling on the subway, mulling in the Xerox copy center I worked at back then. Everyone around me thought I’d gone
off
a tad. Like bad cheese. I mulled so much I could barely hold a conversation. Barely walk a straight line. But eventually, finally, I stopped mulling and started actually writing. I wrote on and off during the next three years. Sometimes I wrote frenetically in every free moment I could steal, while other times I’d take multiple months away from the damn thing… especially if I’d written myself into some cliffhanger corner I couldn’t for the life of me solve. (Strangely, the solutions
always
turned out to have been right in front of me the
entire time.)
I did this first, rough, handwritten draft entirely on yellow legal pads (using my super-special lucky pen), much of it scribbled down in Greenwich Village’s historic
White Horse Tavern
between pints of beer. (I would sit and work in the very booth where, legend had it, Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. I liked the drama of that story, but I wasn’t planning on repeating his performance. At least not until I finished the book.) Since I didn’t map anything out ahead of time or outline or preplan the novel in any way (I was using what I’d later learn was called the “blind discovery” technique), most of the surprises and twists came as complete shocks to
me
, too. This was really cool. I loved it when my own subconscious would jump out and yell
gotcha
! It was almost like I was happily munching on a big bowl of popcorn and watching the story unfold in front of me just as my future readers would
experience it.
Later, across town from my “office” in the White Horse Tavern and back in my tiny East Village apartment, I’d ignore the constant wail of sirens outside the window as best I could. I was busy trying to decipher my crazy left-hander’s chicken scratching so I could type the whole thing out on the used electric typewriter my mom had given me. This was, in essence, the second draft. I found the act of typing up my handwritten stuff was also an act of revising.
Yes, those were the ancient days of typewriters, not quite as long ago as stone tablet times, but pretty close. The ribbons & whiteout era. Nowadays it’s even hard for
me
to imagine how the hell I wrote an entire novel without using a computer. (No cut & paste?? No global changes??? WTF??)
Anyway, long-story-slightly-less-long, Amy Stout over at Bantam/Spectra books was nice enough to buy and publish this thing (and its sequel,
Short Blade
, which was still barely a twinkle in my eye when she agreed to purchase it). I originally envisioned these books as part of a trilogy, but there was a big shakeup at Bantam soon after the second novel came out, and the third book was never bought (or, sadly, even written). One of these days I’d really like to remedy that.
Perhaps soon.
And now to bring you up to date. Not to brag (much) but in the twenty-something years since it first came out (I’m
that
old?), this-here book has been optioned by a veritable Who’s Who of Hollywood (does the name Jerry Bruckheimer ring a bell? Yeah, you heard me). But it has yet to be made into, um, an actual film. However, as part of this ongoing process, numerous scripts have been commissioned by all the various producers who took options. I’ve managed to get my hands on all of them (don’t ask how) and I must say it’s a very interesting experience reading them. Some were pretty close to the book and pretty freakin’ good, some were not close to the book at all and yet were
great
(I wished
I’d
thought of half of the stuff these brilliant screenwriters came up with), and, finally, some of the screenplays seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the book and read like bad episodes of
Mannix
. Ah, Hollywood. Humbling and maddening all
at once.
Okay, down to copper tacks: I haven’t changed
The Host
much for this ebook edition, other than in four small ways.
One: I really wanted the text of this edition to be the exact same book that came out back in 1991 but, after much deliberating, I decided to delete one tiny, passing mention of the World Trade Center buildings I had included in a description of my futuristic Manhattan skyline. Honestly, I just didn’t want it to trigger horrible memories of the dark events of 9/11 in the middle of what is, hopefully, just a fun, escapist,
popcorny romp.
Two: Since I didn’t own the rights to the original cover (painted by the wonderful Paul Youll for the paperback), I needed to create a new one. As a former artist/illustrator myself (and with the help of a wife who is a professional graphic designer and artist, among many other things), I figured we collaborate and do it “in-house.” It was great fun. Hardly any bickering. Hardly.
In the end it’s pretty much the cover I’d always envisioned. It’s not that different, in fact, from what I sketched on the napkin all those years ago. Ironically (considering the #1 change, above), when showing it around recently, one guy mentioned that the twin Empire State buildings combined with the flying spaceships gave him an unpleasant 9/11 vibe. Crap. The last thing we wanted. (
Heavy sigh.)
Three: When they bought the original manuscript, one of the few things Bantam asked me to change was the name P-pajer. I’m not sure why. Face it, my book is full of weird-ass names. But maybe they thought it was confusing to have a name with a hyphen right up near the front of it like that? Maybe the copyeditor was allergic to name hyphens? Dunno. It wasn’t that important to me at the time, so I agreed to change it to Pepajer. Since it was in those pre-personal-computer days, I actually went through my manuscript with a fine point black pen and hand-changed every dash in the name into an e by adding a little loop around it.
But for this ebook edition I’ve given P-pajer back her original moniker, just ‘cause I like the way it looks and sounds. The double Ps are pronounced like the beginning of the word papyrus. Nice peppy plosives popping from your plump
puckered lips.
Four: And finally, the title. In the decades since this novel was first published there have been a surprising numbers of books (and movies!) called
The Host
. (Most of ‘em written by folks
way
more famous than I am. Stephanie Meyer, anyone?) After much hemming and hawing and late night whining (“But it was my title
first!
Waaaaah!”
), I finally decided to modify the name enough so that it was clearly differentiated from these more recent projects.
Levels
is now the name of the series of novels (thanks for coming up with that title, Lucas Foster!), and
The Host
is now the subtitle which refers to this first book. The sequel will be released as
Levels: Short Blade
. (And, if I ever get around to finishing the trilogy, the last book will be called something like
Levels: Jesusland
.)
I hope you enjoy reading this thing. I did. No joke. I have to admit, when, in preparation for this rerelease, I finally sat down and read it again from beginning to end after all these years… I had
way
more fun than I expected. Tons of fun. I actually like this crazy thing a
lot
. It’s a helluva ride, I think. I hope you think so, too.
Make yourself a nice big bowl of popcorn, sit back, and enjoy.
–
June 2014
, Peter R. Emshwiller