Contact & FAQ

My email address is ent[ ]ment@qntm.org (put "angle" in the gap).

This is deliberately obfuscated so spam bots don't harvest it.

I get a fair bit of spam anyway.

Ho hum.

Alternatively, leave a comment below, then check back later. I may respond quickly or slowly. Old, answered comments may be archived.

Fiction queries

For the purposes of my fiction, I'm represented by Caitlin Blasdell at Liza Dawson Associates. Email cbl[ ]ll@lizadawsonassociates.com (put "asde" in the gap).

Frequently asked questions

Can I contribute an article to qntm.org?

No.

Can I put an advertisement on qntm.org?

No.

I have a question about Absurdle.

Please check the Absurdle FAQ before contacting me or leaving a comment.

Can I obtain a signed copy of one of your books?

Unfortunately not.

Can I translate a qntm.org article from English into another language and publish it on my website, in our magazine, etc.?

You can make the translation, but I'd rather you didn't publish it yourself. If you email the translation to me, I would (in most cases) be happy to host it here myself, where you're free to link to it. This has been done several times before:

My preferred format for submissions is HTML.

Can I use your writing as raw data for a machine learning project?

No.

Can I adapt The Difference for a short film/etc.?

Please read this.

Can I print out a qntm.org article for my personal use?

Yes.

Can I give you some money?

You can buy my books Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories, There Is No Antimemetics Division, Ra, Fine Structure and Ed, and tell all your most influential friends!

If I want to support you, which version of your books should I buy?

The Gumroad EPUB editions give me the biggest absolute cut per unit sold. Next best are the other ebook editions, and finally the print editions.

If you have enjoyed my work, please share it with all your cool friends. Please also consider leaving a review, or at least a star rating, on the store front where you made your purchase.

What's the favicon supposed to be?

It's a face in profile.

Discussion (24)

2022-01-27 15:24:23 by Paul Strickland:

Are you willing to tell us your pronouns qntm?

2022-01-27 15:31:22 by qntm:

He/him.

2022-01-27 16:01:52 by Paul Strickland:

Thanks for that personal information. Beyond the obvious fact that you are less hairy than I am, I can deduce nothing.

2022-02-21 21:23:43 by qntm:

I have cleared out some old questions which I believe have now been answered.

2022-03-16 16:05:20 by Benny Andersen:

Hello. I am very happy to have come across your text about Learn Perl in about 2 hours 30 minutes . I am retired an last used Perl in 2006 (for something serious). So it was SO nice to have an explanation without all the edge cases like you say. I really agree with your statement "dislike the official Perl documentation at http://perl.org/ for being intensely technical and giving far too much space to very unusual edge cases ". Tank you so much. :-)

2022-03-28 03:49:32 by Spaceghost:

Any social media? Or just the site? Just read There Is No Antimemetics Division and am ordering more of your books. Absolutely loved the organization and writing of it.

2022-03-30 18:58:27 by George:

From the FAQ discussion about APPLE (guess) and CRIMP (secret word), how can the second P not be marked yellow before the hidden word has been determined to have only one P in it? That would be the case early in the game while there are still many possible hidden words...?

2022-04-04 23:54:17 by qntm:

Spaceghost: I am @qntm on Twitter. George: every possible hidden word always results in the same responses to every guess made so far. If you guess "APPLE" and the first P is yellow then that means the secret word has one P in it, not at location 2 (or location 3). It doesn't mean the secret word is definitely "CRIMP", it could be a lot of things.

2022-06-24 23:49:26 by Jarred Filmer:

I have benefited greatly from things your mind has produced You have made beautiful art that has moved me, and I wanted to say thank you Thank you, Sam, for your writing

2022-11-17 23:45:07 by MOH:

Is there anywhere that most benefits you that I can buy a few physical copies of "Antimemetics"? Amazon seems to be the main option but if there's an alternative that gives you a better percentage I'd rather use that . (Western Europe if relevant)

2022-11-17 23:48:41 by qntm:

Currently Amazon is the only place to acquire new physical copies of my books. However... ask me again in a year.

2022-11-17 23:50:13 by MOH:

Also that's probably the best captcha (sic) I've seen but predictive text on mobile auto changes capitalisation which may lose some comments. Though appreciate that may also be intentional to avoid idle ramblings. So I'll just say thank you for "Antimemetics" and I really look forward to catching up on the rest of your work

2022-12-22 20:58:16 by skv:

Can I give you some money via Monero or another cryptocurrency? I know there are some ethical problems with cryptocurrency, but buying your books through Amazon is arguably worse.

2022-12-27 15:31:29 by qntm:

You can buy my books through other non-Amazon platforms: * https://qntm.gumroad.com/ * https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=qntm I have no use for cryptocurrency.

2023-01-08 04:59:42 by ultradianguy:

Love what you've written about time travel in movies and tv! Will you ever do Interstellar or Arrival? Or Donne Darko? I recognize those aren't just time travel - lots of multiverse stuff there - but I suspect you'd do a great job explaining these as well.

2023-11-05 02:41:02 by Quaint:

You’ve written about the issues with having continuous time zones and with having a single, global time zone, which are the extreme (and so maybe most interesting) possibilities. Do you have any thoughts on the impact of smaller changes, e.g., time zones which are twice or half the width of current time zones?

2023-11-07 14:11:32 by DrBoBowman:

I believe I have found a sequence that always results in a 5 guess win; can I send you the information as a possible bug?

2023-11-07 14:27:42 by qntm:

No, thanks... Absurdle is deterministic, that behaviour is intentional.

2024-01-12 17:07:54 by Bob Frank:

Hey, I haven't found anything done by you in the last year, are you still around?

2024-01-12 22:21:35 by qntm:

Yeah, I've been active on Twitter and Bluesky and I've been working on a writing project which I can't talk about just yet.

2024-01-26 03:20:34 by Twisted_Code:

Hi Sam. Just wanted to let you know there seems to be some sort of server-side or caching problem with your front page. A friend and I both checked from our respective computers and for some reason when we visit your home page we get the Spanish-translated version right now, then get sent to the Spanish version of other pages if we click certain links from the homepage. I suspect a caching server between your actual host and us might be to blame, and I don't know if you can do anything about that, but I'd appreciate if you could look into it!

2024-01-26 20:31:03 by qntm:

That's fine, that's because the most recent 10+ pages added to the site are from the Spanish (Latin American) translation of Ra which I uploaded recently. I will consider altering the behaviour of the "Latest" section to ignore non-English pages.

2024-01-27 12:48:27 by LRisk:

Dear qntm, Thankyou for your fiction. I started reading it in 2017 and forgot about it for years until a strange but familiarly titled book was advertised to me on Amazon. I have finally finished your Antimemetics series in the span of a day. Nostalgia is a strange drug but to be honest I think it is the most appropriate way to read your works. I hope to read it again in a few years time and then come back here to see this comment lingering, a strange sensation reminding me that I posted it. With luck my daughter will do the same. It's so strange but I have a sensation of being linked to the past and the future because of this it's possibly my favourite piece of writing. Thankyou again.

2024-02-06 19:28:39 by Twisted_Code:

@qntm Re: recent Spanish pages uploaded oh, that makes sense. Well if you do anything with it, there should be a few ways to infer a visitor's preferred language, including just putting a language button somewhere. That was the first thing I looked for when I found myself in the wrong neighborhood, linguistically. @LRisk well, how long it lingers depends on whether Sam leaves it up for you, he mentioned at one point cleaning up answered comments

New comment by :

Plain text only. Line breaks become <br/>
The square root of minus one: