Predict the Wool 5 Suckage!

First, can you guess how many emails/tweets/Facebook/Goodreads messages I’ve received concerning Wool 5? I’ll give you a hint: It’s more than I get from estranged Nigerian princesses who want me to take their millions and make sweet love to them. (Yeah, that many!)

So, what does this mean for Wool 5? It means the Suckage is going to be legendary. The last time there was this much Suckage, Mel Brooks was going Transformers on us in Spaceballs, and Mega-Maid was Hoovering all the breathable air from the Earth’s atmosphere.

There happens to be a formula for this:

E = m * Suckage * c ^ 2

Where E is Expectations, m is any form of Media, and the Suckage is directly proportional to E (by a factor of the speed of light squared).

This is sometimes referred to as “The Matrix Algorithm” or “Matrix Mathematics.” I’ve also seen this formula simply be called “The Prequels.”

So, here’s our Suckage scale, with 10 being the most Suckage and 1 being the least:

10 – Star Wars Episode I

9 – Duke Nukem Forever

8 – Windows Millenium (WinME)

7 – Spiderman 3

6 – Staying Alive

5 – The iPhone 4s

4 – Scarlett

3 – Ender’s Shadow

2 – Mockingjay

1 – Return of the Jedi

So, chime in with your predictions! Meanwhile, I’ll be writing under the crippling pressure that comes from Middling Success and trying my damnedest to concoct a series of events with such craft, precision, and care that each and every one of you is left equally disappointed.

Wish me luck!

6 responses to “Predict the Wool 5 Suckage!”

  1. MHodziewich Avatar
    MHodziewich

    Good luck! I do a lot of reading, and your Wool stories are incredible. I read your blog posts about how Wool just kind of took off. I’m not sure how I stumbled across it on amazon, but I bought 1-3 all at once. I finally cracked them open today (after reading Halfway Home) and read 1-4. You created an amazing world. I loved the ending to the first one. The events in your books are unexpected and make the stories a joy to read. Congratulations on your unexpected success. I may be looking forward to Wool 5 more than the next book in the Ender’s Shadow series. I’ve already added the Plagiarist to my amazon wish list and will likely check out your Molly books. Thanks also for sharing your story on this blog. It was wonderful to read about all your page refreshing and screenshots.

    Reply
  2. Hugh C. Howey Avatar
    Hugh C. Howey

    I’ll take that as one vote for #3 – Ender’s Shadow.

    Reply
  3. darrkblu Avatar
    darrkblu

    I might place Duke Nukem Forever at the top – if only because Star Wars Episode I, when placed into a DVD player, actually works. DNF was an exercise in faulty software and consistently failed to operate consistently.

    My vote in, I’d like to go off-topic and mention that I discovered and read the entire Wool series while flying from Florida to South Korea. I gambled and bought all four before I had read Wool. I had a number of other books on my Fire also, but as soon as I started reading Wool it didn’t matter. I blazed through all four books without a break. I’m not sure why Wool is so great, but it is. I guess I already thanked you for writing them by way of paying for them, but I’d like to say thanks for writing these books, they were a pleasure to read.

    Reply
  4. Hugh C. Howey Avatar
    Hugh C. Howey

    It’s crazy hearing stories like this. And believe me, your feedback and comments on my site are much larger thanks to me than the trifling coin passing between us. And I’m glad you can admit to not being sure why these stories are great; I have no clue myself! But I’ll take your word on it. I just hope I can get lucky five times in a row.

    Also, your vote is entirely logical except for one small detail: Episode I would have been so much better had it blown up my Blu-Ray player like an impossible mission note intended for Tom Cruise! The only thing Duke Nukem had going for it, really, was that the CTD issues made it blessedly unplayable.

    Of course, no vote is wrong, so yours is now duly logged. This isn’t Putin’s Russia, you know. All votes count — and only once.

    Reply
  5. RBrumm Avatar
    RBrumm

    The only problem with your formula is it doesn’t take account for how long we have to wait for the suckage. The longer the wait the greater the expectations. At the rate you’re cracking out the Wolly goodness we don’t have time to let our expectations rise. Oops, I just put more pressure on you didn’t I?

    Your list is good but for me Battlefield 3 is at the top of the list. We waited five years and everybody expected it to be the most incredible groundbreaking game in history. Turned out it’s an outstanding game but not enough to keep away the whining from fanboys who expected a life altering experience.

    Just like a 20 year old living in his parents basement has an altered skew what it takes to develop a video game, normal schmoes don’t know what it takes to write a book either. Take the suckage complaints with a grain of salt and keep forging ahead my friend.

    I’m going to go play some BF3….

    Reply
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    cat treats allergy

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