Contemporary Authors

• The Punch Escrow ( novel) Inkshares (Oakland, CA), 2017

1. The punch escrow LCCN 2017940692 Type of material Book Personal name Klein, Tal M. Main title The punch escrow / Tal M. Klein. Published/Produced Oakland, CA : Inkshares, 2017. Projected pub date 1707 Description pages cm ISBN 9781942645580 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/talmklein/

  Tal Klein
  3rd degree connection3rd
  Enterprise Swashbuckler
  Lakeside Software LIU Post
  Greater Detroit Area 500+ 500+ connections
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  I've had many dream jobs and a couple of great exits. I'm lucky. I've worked hand in hand with some of the brightest minds in the world at public companies, amazing startups, and have built technologies that made it easier and more secure to get work done.

  My basic philosophy towards enterprise go-to-market: If you're going to make a technology, you should understand the technology and the people who'll use it.

  Whether we're talking field marketing, lead generation programs, product roadmap, product messaging, due diligence, or competitive positioning - when it comes to leading marketing organizations, it's been my job to map solutions to markets within (as well as outside of) product portfolios. Sometimes this required creating new products by forming cross-functional teams with engineers from multiple product groups, and other times it required launching a company from scratch.

  Throughout my tenure in the industry I've never seen two customers use the same set of products and solutions the same way. Bridging products and services with customer needs is the key, and many times the difference between good marketing and bad marketing is as simple as speaking in the right vernacular.

  Whether an amalgamation of code, features, and UI is a "product", a "service", or a "solution" - at the end of the day, it is the marketer's job to develop a narrative that harmonizes utility and need through context.

  Specialties: Messaging, engaging with industry analysts, public relations, design, content creation, branding, competitive intelligence, corporate development, product integration, trial strategy, product marketing, strategic planning, due diligence, mergers and acquisitions, product strategy, technical marketing, demo creation, product management, product life cycle planning, executive engagement, managing cross-product teams, project management.

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  Tal’s Articles
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  The Microsoft acquisition of LinkedIn makes perfect sense
  Tal Klein on LinkedIn

  Publish date June 17, 2016
  June 17, 2016
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  On Science Fiction and Product Strategy
  Tal Klein on LinkedIn

  Publish date April 6, 2016
  April 6, 2016
  Experience
  Lakeside Software
  Chief Marketing Officer
  Company NameLakeside Software
  Dates EmployedApr 2017 – Present Employment Duration1 yr
  LocationBloomfield Hills, MI
  All of the marketing things.

  Media (1)This position has 1 media
  A Conversation with Lakeside Software
  A Conversation with Lakeside Software
  This media is a video
  Lakeside Software
  VP Strategy
  Company NameLakeside Software
  Dates EmployedMar 2015 – Apr 2017 Employment Duration2 yrs 2 mos
  LocationBloomfield Hills, MI
  For over 18 years Lakeside Software has been leading the charge in end user computing analytics. I'm working on migrating our products to the cloud, offering SysTrack-as-a-Service to help IT assess their end user computing estate and proactively support end users. You can take a look at some of the stuff I've been working on here:

  win10assessment.com (with Microsoft) - Utilizing SysTrack to determine your organization's Windows 10 readiness

  assessment.vmware.com (with VMware) - Utilizing SysTrack to assess and scope your VMware Horizon VDI and AppVolumes deployment

  www.citrix.com/products/xenapp-xendesktop/secure-browser-assessment.html (with Citrix) - Utilizing SysTrack to assess published browser security benefits

  Media (2)This position has 2 media
  SysTrack provides essential IT telemetry for Windows 10
  SysTrack provides essential IT telemetry for Windows 10
  This media is a video
  VMworld 2015 Trilogy Tech Talk - Tal Klein of Lakeside unveil SysTrack Community
  VMworld 2015 Trilogy Tech Talk - Tal Klein of Lakeside unveil SysTrack Community
  This media is a video
  Adallom
  VP of Marketing
  Company NameAdallom
  Dates EmployedOct 2013 – Mar 2015 Employment Duration1 yr 6 mos
  LocationPalo Alto, California
  Adallom (acquired by Microsoft) was an amazing company in the Cloud Access Security Broker space comprised of world class security engineers who were hungry to make the cloud a safer place for enterprise data. I joined the company in the pre-product stage.

  Launching a company into an increasingly crowded marketplace was both good and bad. The good news was that incumbents in the market had already created some notion of need, and ideally the formation of budget. However, unlike Bromium where we were creating a net new category in endpoint protection, at Adallom we were educating the market on our differentiation, specifically on the value of holistic security over commodity "checkbox" features.

  Given that we were not first to market in this category, the first thing I tackled was quickly developing concise, differentiated messaging that appealed to both technical and economic buyers. Utilizing established close relationships with leading analysts, journalists, and influencers (I call them instigators) in the cloud and security spaces, I was able to uplevel the cloud security discussion, thus maximizing Adallom's share of voice by honing in on our distinction.

  I'm a big believer in Wardley Mapping (aka Value Chain Mapping). Using mapping, we were able to predict the vectors our competitors would take and stay two steps ahead, or allow them to occupy themselves with tactical low value distractions in areas which we knew would be commoditized soonest.

  Other than contributing to the company in a marketing capacity, I also referred our first paying customers, as well as our first seven figure deal. As in Bromium, it's wonderful to see a company go from concept to explosive growth in a short time frame. The feeling is addictive.

  The thing I'm proudest of is the team I've built at Adallom. Recruiting is the most strategic aspect of marketing, and Adallom has the best enterprise security marketing team I've ever seen. I don't envy the competition.

  Bromium
  Senior Director of Products
  Company NameBromium
  Dates EmployedFeb 2012 – Oct 2013 Employment Duration1 yr 9 mos
  LocationCupertino, CA
  Joined early in the stealth period. Helped launch the company, and define path to market. Ran marketing team prior to CMO.

  Design - end user experience, look & feel, in-product marketing, reminding engineers of their humanity, reminding product managers of their managerialness, things that rhyme with orange

  Strategy - extensiblity, agility, ecosystem, technology, stratosphere, what comes next

  Marketing - content, talking head, trade shows, blogging, web strategy, social strategy, branding, heavy lifting

  Citrix Systems
  Director of Technical Marketing
  Company NameCitrix Systems
  Dates EmployedMar 2010 – Feb 2012 Employment Duration2 yrs
  LocationSanta Clara, CA
  Work closely with R&D, engineering, and sales, both to develop and define new products as well as to enhance existing products/product lines

  Competitive Testing, Intelligence and Analysis

  AR/PR technical liaison/spokesperson for XenApp and XenDesktop

  Content creation for demand marketing key plays

  Product messaging and positioning

  Trial & usage based marketing, analysis, and telemetry

  Demo development and strategy

  Evangelize Citrix to customers and customers within Citrix

  Managing an international team

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  Education
  LIU Post
  LIU Post
  Degree NameBS Field Of StudyInformation Science
  Dates attended or expected graduation 1995 – 1998

  Skills & Endorsements
  Cloud Computing

  See 143 endorsements for Cloud Computing99+

  Endorsed by Jerry Chen and 40 others who are highly skilled at this

  Endorsed by 5 of Tal’s colleagues at Lakeside Software

  Product Management

  See 133 endorsements for Product Management99+

  Endorsed by Dave Asprey and 16 others who are highly skilled at this

  Endorsed by 3 of Tal’s colleagues at Lakeside Software

  Enterprise Software

  See 107 endorsements for Enterprise Software99+

  Endorsed by Chris Wolf and 15 others who are highly skilled at this

  Endorsed by 5 of Tal’s colleagues at Lakeside Software

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  Recommendations
  Received (12)
  Given (25)
  Kwang C. Kim
  Kwang C. Kim
  SVP of Corporate Development at Aptiviti

  December 17, 2013, Kwang C. worked with Tal but at different companies

  Tal is one of the more thoughtful tech leaders around with a great understanding of what the market wants and how to deliver a product that meets the needs of his customers. What's more impressive is that Tal is a brilliant and successful individual yet he carries himself with a humility that is genuine - a refreshing quality. Personally, I am really excited to see Tal bring together his unique skill set, strategic know how and his battle tested experience at Bromium, Citrix and Exodus to take Adallom to the next stage.
  Russell Mitchell
  Russell Mitchell
  Enterprise Software Executive

  September 17, 2013, Russell worked with Tal but at different companies

  I know literally thousands of people across the globe in the enterprise software space. It is my business to know them - from senior executives down the chain to customers, product architects, channel partners, investors, field reps, etc.

  With this ensemble, I debate the software market to identify trends and dislocations at both a macro and micro sector level.

  In that time, I have met no person with a better grasp of his market than Tal. On top of this, what makes Tal extraordinary is his ability to seamlessly migrate between the technical and sales aspects of his space(s). He is as comfortable leading an architecture conversation with a group of prod dev execs as he is discussing go-to-market strategies with C-level execs. Or presenting all of this simply and confidently to investors.

  His forward thinking is second to none. I trust his enterprise software opinion without reservation.
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  Accomplishments
  Tal has 10 publications10
  Expand publications section
  Publications
  Four Thoughts on IT, SaaS, and Windows 10 Has Security Ops Outlived Its Purpose? The Tao of Responsible Disclosure No Solution to The Human Condition How SaaS Adoption Is Changing Cloud Security Accidents happen. That’s why the cloud needs crumple zones The Case for Naked Risk Management Looking Shadow IT In The Eye, Realizing You’re Staring At Your Own Reflection Mind the Cloud Security Gap How do you drive IT security innovation? Try thinking like a user!
  Tal has 2 languages2
  Expand languages section
  Languages
  English Hebrew
  Interests
  Tesla
  Tesla
  1,657,788 followers

  Aviso Partners, Inc.
  Aviso Partners, Inc.
  1,624 followers

  Routier
  Routier
  419 followers

  theCUBE Alumni
  theCUBE Alumni
  1,157 members

  Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University
  Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University
  1,888 members

  Spiceworks
  Spiceworks
  32,159 followers

  See all

• Medium - https://medium.com/the-ribbon/author-interview-tal-klien-93fb931bd789

  Bennet S. Johnson
  Jul 31, 2017
  Author Interview: Tal Klein
  The author of The Punch Escrow on embracing technological progression, the authentic shaping of characters, and having one’s brain explode

  Photo by Lai Long
  It’s a lot like dinner and drinks with a handsome counterpart. What begins as a flirtation: some austere glance, a subdued giggle, an evocative sentence, inevitably results in total envelopment. You’re smitten, lost, gone. But before you completely register as an interloper within this new world, make sure that your means of transportation — those devices which teleported you elsewhere — don’t copy you only to kill your original self. If such is the case, well, I suggest you throw on some 1980s new wave tunes and enjoy the inevitably unstoppable rush that is your future.

  Tal M. Klein’s The Punch Escrow took me for a momentous ride — with its laughs, terrors, and theoretical concepts, I was unable to stop the pages from flowing one after another. On the surface, this Sci-Fi thriller speculates on the nature of human connectivity and the lengths which one might go to retain their love for a partner. Usually that would be enough for most writers. But for Klein, the relationship shared between Joel and Sylvia is a catalyst by which the severity of the novel’s themes might best be explored. You see, in 2147, everything we’ve ever thought might be possible has become a reality. Our applications have developed personalities. Our forms of identification are displayed by comms which allow us to register and acknowledge one another via a look and a nanobyte processing within the brain. We have digital personal assistants. Everyone in the world utilizes the same international currency. And of course, teleportation is now real. Or is it?

  It’s possible that International Transport — one of the largest, most hegemonic corporations in the world — hasn’t told us everything. Though we may instantly move from New York City to Costa Rica, it’s not actually us: the original person who steps into the device, which arrives at our desired location. We are copied. That copy is then sent to where ever in the world we might wish to go and the original — the us that entered the device — is cleared — or is it murdered? With his sharp wit, entertaining dialogue, and invigorated approach to constructing a futuristic society in which the powers of marketing and technology have created an ethical dilemma the world is completely ignorant of, Tal M. Klein gives the audience a novel which is as much about our desire to be and feel authentic as it is about our needs to think and go beyond what is currently possible.

  Tal M. Klein read at Literati Bookstore on July 28th. His debut novel, The Punch Escrow, has been a featured review on Ars Technica and he recently spoke with Paste Magazine. In the week leading up to the reading, I was lucky enough to ask him about all of the big ideas which populate this thrilling read.

  For some reason — purposeful or silly — I found myself thinking a lot about Walter Benjamin while reading your book. The manners by which copies take away from the authenticity of the original and deny a transparent viewing of the processes of production kept creeping into the back of my mind. In The Punch Escrow, teleportation is actually duplication: people are copied from an original location and sent to the location which they wish to arrive at and upon arrival the original version of them is cleared. In many ways — similar to Benjamin — we find ourselves believing that the copy is less authentic. The process by which one is teleported is also lacking in transparency — nobody knows that they are being copied and then cleared. Still, people continue to teleport and the copies are undeniably human: they walk, talk, breath, love, experience anger, despair, lust, etc. How should one best unravel these competing arguments?

  I’d rather you be silly! I like that you brought up Walter Benjamin. Do you know his early essay, The Task of the Translator? I think it bears significant relevance here. You stated, “We find ourselves believing that the copy is less authentic.” I would hope the book’s conclusion is more open to translation. While the original Joel Byram might be of such a mindset initially, there are moments of the other Joel’s life which he absorbs later — in retrospect — that blur his position on the matter. As for the reader, well, I think it depends on which character the reader most closely identifies with. If we look at things from Sylvia’s position, I don’t know if she is certain the copy of Joel is less authentic than the original. If we further pivot and occupy, say, Corina Shafer’s position, I don’t think she particularly cares which Joel is which, she just wants there to be one of them.

  Joel Byram seems like he’d be an enjoyable character to write — an anti-hero, quick witted, esoteric smart-ass forced into the role of the leading man. At the same time, I would assume he might have become a little frustrating to deal with. Sometimes seriousness is needed, especially when one happens to be an international criminal. How did you go about balancing his various traits so as to allow for his development throughout the story?

  That’s an easier question. Have you ever seen the French film, Alexandre Le Bienheureux? I imagine Joel as a younger version of that film’s protagonist. Not that Joel finds himself in a similar marital scenario, mind — in the movie Alexandre’s wife was overbearing and mean. But the character, Alexandre, was a happy-go-lucky pragmatist. Alexandre’s relationship with his dog, whom he trained to handle his menial needs is akin to Joel’s relationship with the semi-sentient technology around him. Joel treats life as a Rube Goldberg device. The means to his ends are sometimes convoluted because the obvious solutions aren’t always available to him. He’s an anti-hero, as you say, and thus cannot superman his way out of conflict. Without risking a spoiler, I harken back to your earlier question; there are moments in which Joel accepts death might be a necessary component of a device necessary to his survival. Once he is aware another version of him is out there, death becomes a means to an end, but not a means to his end — if you get my drift. The hardest part was walking the fine line between smartass and jerk, and that’s not something I can take credit for. I can thank my wife, my beta readers, and my editors for calling me out whenever Joel took a turn for the jerk side.

  Inkshares (7/25/2017)
  The passages in which the reader gets to witness Joel’s talents as a salter were some of my favorite. I found myself thinking back to the Amazon Echo scare of late last year. The hypothetical gap between that consumer scare and the contents of your book is quite unsettling: from people fearing an application might be listening in on their private conversations, recording data in order to sell them more — possibly unnecessary — products, to a time in which professionals are paid to deliberately dupe, trick, or expose the knowledge gaps of an application in order to ensure total consumer satisfaction, while simultaneously being paid in an international currency. We’ll see what happens within the next one hundred and thirty years. But for now, as both a novelist and a consumer, how do you grapple with the concept of salting?

  We humans can figure out how to accomplish complex tasks like walking or beating a video game by both practice and observation. However, thus far we haven’t been able to give computers those same skills. Today we are just starting to move away from “reinforcement learning,” a methodology that rewards “luck.” For example, today when the we ask an AI program to learn how to play a maze game, it moves randomly, knowing nothing about the game board. As it discovers new rewards or shortcuts it begins placing little algorithms in those spots, which continuously learn how best to avoid pratfalls and get more “points.” However, modern research has shown that computers perform much better when humans participate in the process, at least initially. Rather than rely on “luck,” the computer can develop its algorithms on the soundness of human logic. Eventually it can develop algorithms that guess what the humans will do next. At some point it will stop needing human input because it will be able to predict what the humans would do with a high degree of certainty. How do I feel about it? I think it’s an inevitability. History has shown that those who stand in the way of progress always lose. I believe it’s better for us to embrace progress and try to shape it rather than impede it.

  I found your usage of footnotes to be both helpful and entertaining. This isn’t always the case whenever a novelist adapts footnotes as a necessary component for storytelling. Were these footnotes always prevalent? Did they always have the same Joel Byram voice to them?

  Thank you for saying that! I’m finding The Punch Escrow’s footnotes have become the most controversial and polarizing aspect of the book. They exist as a reminder that the original manifestation of The Punch Escrow was as a text book from the future on the history of teleportation. In a way the novel as you read it now is the inverse of its first draft; a dry text book with snarky footnotes left intact by a man who warns the reader of “the truth.” My publisher and editors warned me that my copious use of footnotes might alienate readers, but I felt strongly about their inclusion — I’d spent three years researching the clockwork of my world and felt then (as I do now) that the “how we got here” is an important part of “what’s happening now.” Adding Joel’s voice to the footnotes was my way of bridging what the book then was with what it is now.

  Even though your novel takes place in the year 2147, you’re a big fan of allusions. Romeo and Juliet, the band Culture Club, the film The Princess Bride: there are multiple nods to art which appears in a time and society separate from the one in the book. What might a Sci-Fi writer be able to gain when referencing certain art forms which exist outside of the time period of their story?

  Since the story was being told by Joel, I needed to find a way to explain how one guy happened to have such a mastery of science. The only means I could think of counteracting his apparent scientific omniscience was to give Joel a penchant for trivial knowledge. I’m terrible at giving advice to other writers because I suffer from impostor syndrome. References to and metaphors of the past helps bridge the gap from the book’s world to the real world. It’s all about suspension of disbelief. And Chekhov’s gun!

  I’m curious about the different Sci-Fi authors you enjoy reading. The reason I mention this is because I found your reinvigoration of the teleportation motif to be utterly fascinating. What made you reappropriate this more traditional component of the genre? Are there any Sci-Fi authors whose writing intrigued you to the point of wanting to play around with the concept of teleportation?

  I’d like to say there was this profound voice inside of me that always wanted to tell the world how commercialized human teleportation might actually work and warn people of its existential ramifications. That, however, would be a lie — and I am here to tell the truth. The truth then is, I never really thought much about teleportation other than as a Sci-Fi trope — a disposable Star Trek transportation mechanism — until it came up as a non-sequitur in a conversation. Someone with a PhD in computer science explained how teleportation would really work using actual science, and it blew my mind. I said something like, “So you’re saying every single time Scotty beamed Kirk up, he would have had to kill him?” — “Yes,” came the answer — and my brain exploded. That’s when I started researching teleportation. I felt a craving to solve that problem. But what influenced the most popular aspects of The Punch Escrow; the Hard Sci-Fi, and Joel Byram’s voice, respectively, are owed to Andy Weir’s The Martian, and Scott Meyer’s Off To Be The Wizard (the first book in the Magic 2.0 series). I had a chance to meet both these authors in person for the first time at San Diego Comic Con this year and unlike any other celebrities I’ve met before, these two were genuinely worthy of their hype.

• Paste - https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/07/tal-m-klein-the-punch-escrow.html

  Tal M. Klein Talks Teleportation and His Techno-Thriller The Punch Escrow
  By Frannie Jackson | July 27, 2017 | 5:04pm
  BOOKS FEATURES TAL M. KLEIN
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  Tal M. Klein Talks Teleportation and His Techno-Thriller The Punch Escrow
  Tal M. Klein’s debut novel, The Punch Escrow, kicks off by describing how “teleportation killed the Mona Lisa.” And it only gets crazier from there.

  Set in 2147, the “techno-thriller with a love story at its core” (as Klein labels it) is set in a future in which genetically engineered mosquitoes have curbed global warming and AI engines pay people who help them act more human. Freight teleportation has existed for decades, and—thanks to tech advances made after the Mona Lisa accident—human teleportation is now possible. In fact, it’s the “safest form of transportation.” In the 21 years since its commercialization, no human has ever been “maimed, altered, vanished or otherwise mistreated” by teleportation.

  Until Klein’s protagonist, Joel Byram, gets duplicated.

  Teleportation may be cliché trope in science fiction, but the tech’s ramifications are terrifying. A conversation about its dangers catalyzed Klein’s idea for the novel.

  “I was having a discussion by the water cooler where I was working several years ago, and we were talking about an arbitrary topic to me: the Star Trek reboot,” Klein says in a phone interview with Paste. “I was complaining about J.J. Abrams using too much lens flare, and then our CEO—he has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT—says, ‘It’s bullshit!’ I said, ‘The lens flare?’ And he said, ‘No, the whole premise of Star Trek is bullshit, because it presupposes that any human would ever set foot in a transporter.’”

  Since teleportation involves getting vaporized and printed out in another location, Klein’s boss argued that no sane person would risk it. Which made Klein wonder how teleportation became so readily accepted in sci-fi.

  “I couldn’t find any origin stories,” he says. “I found lots of literary examples of people who explored the existential notion of teleportation and duplication…but nobody really talks about where it started.”

  1punchescrowcover.jpgThe Punch Escrow was born out of Klein’s desire to imagine teleportation’s commercialization. His first manuscript read like a textbook about the emergence of transportation technology, with Joel’s story told in the liner notes. It garnered a publishing offer, but Klein chose to turn it down.

  “I was excited about the publishing offer, but one of the things I really didn’t like was their antiquated marketing plan,” Klein says. “They were going to buy endcaps in bookstores and advertising in magazines. And I was like, ‘I don’t know how often [the book’s audience] sets foot in a bookstore. They consume stuff on Reddit and go to websites like Nerdist and Geek & Sundry. They live on the Internet. This book needs to be published in their universe.’”

  The same weekend that he passed on the publishing deal, Klein discovered and entered Geek & Sundry’s 2016 Hard Science Contest in partnership with Inkshares.

  “I had previously supported one of my friend’s projects on Inkshares, so I knew the site,” Klein says. “And I knew they were a reader driven publishing platform, meaning you’re not just trying to crowdfund the book. There’s a lot more that goes into it with editorial components. They act as your manager in the Hollywood system. So not only do you get to publish a book through them, you automatically get repped through United Talent Agency. It would open up a lot more doors for me.”

  The Punch Escrow won the contest, making it the inaugural title in Geek & Sundry’s new publishing imprint. But Klein realized his manuscript’s real story was in Joel’s liner notes, leading him to rewrite the entire book from scratch after his win. The result is a novel about Joel’s fight for survival after he’s duplicated while teleporting, with the scientific text relegated to footnotes scattered throughout the book.

  “[Inkshares] ran a plagiarism checker on the final draft,” Klein says. “So I asked if they could feed the first draft into the checker, and then check it against the final draft. It came up as 93% different.”

  The rewrite proved to be a bold move that worked in Klein’s favor. Lionsgate acquired the rights to The Punch Escrow in April, months ahead of the book’s release date this week. And while it’s too early to know when (or if) fans can expect a movie, it sounds like Lionsgate is interested in Klein’s work beyond the first novel.

  “One of the cool things about Lionsgate is that they refer to the project as ‘The Future,’ not as The Punch Escrow,” Klein says. “They liked the idea that it’s a world, and it’s got a whole bunch of stuff that happens.”

  Klein’s already at work on his next project, but he won’t divulge anything concrete about it. And even though The Punch Escrow ends with a cliffhanger, it’s unclear if his next book will be the sequel.

  “I’ve been writing a bunch of content that exists in the world of The Punch Escrow,” Klein says. “Some of it is events before the events of The Punch Escrow, and some of it is after. Some of it happened during The Punch Escrow, but tangentially. There’s definitely a sequel that’s being written, but there’s also other content that is going to manifest itself in other ways.”

  Regardless of what Klein releases next, his future is one worth exploring. While Joel witnesses the ugly side of that world (being hunted by both the organization that controls teleportation and a radical religious sect will do that to you), it’s also surprisingly idyllic. Dystopian lit may be trending, but The Punch Escrow’s shift away from that genre is refreshing.

  “So many people are so defeatist when it comes to the future, and that was another big sci-fi trope that I wanted to avoid,” Klein says. “The future of The Punch Escrow is a world in which I can imagine myself being happy…Bad things happen in it, but bad things happen now.”

  Readers will gravitate to Klein’s novel for the action, but they’ll stay for the world building—and the twists. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, it’s impossible to describe what truly makes his book unique. This isn’t Star Trek “Second Chances” or a riff on Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, and Joel’s duplication isn’t the MacGuffin.

  Klein simply says the world of The Punch Escrow—and its real MacGuffin—“accounts for us being human.”

  “And part of what makes us human is being a little bit short-sighted.”

  Frannie Jackson is Paste’s Books Editor. She reads a ridiculous amount of sci-fi and fantasy, and she occasionally posts on Twitter.

• Hollywood Reporter - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/lionsgate-lands-sci-fi-story-punch-escrow-991810

  Rebecca Ford, "Lionsgate in Talks to Pick Up Sci-Fi Story The Punch Escrow.

  'The Punch Escrow'

  Tal M. Klein's book is set in the year 2147, when teleportation has become the ideal form of transportation.
  In a competitive situation, Lionsgate is emerging as the winner for the rights to the upcoming sci-fi book The Punch Escrow and is now in final negotiations to acquire them.
  The deal will cross the seven-figure mark, an astonishing sum for first-time author whose book has yet to be published.
  Tal M. Klein is the author behind the book. Klein was a tech entrepreneur who started writing it as a textbook from the future.
  "I wanted to write a story set in the future that addressed a lot of questions I've had about where our world is going—not dystopia or the apocalypse, just a credible world a century-plus from today in which our relationship with technology continues to evolve at its current pace," said Klein.
  The story, described as a sci-fi thriller with a love story at its core, is set in the year 2147. The world has changed greatly: most diseases are curable, teleportation is the travel method of choice and mosquitoes have been genetically modified to feast on carbon fumes instead of blood, ending air pollution.
  The story's protagonist, Joel Byram, lives a normal life, spending his days training artificial-intelligence engines to act more human — until the day he's accidentally duplicated while teleporting. Now Joel must outsmart the shadowy organization that controls teleportation, and find a way to get back to the woman he loves in a world that now has two of him.
  The book generated plenty of interest from studios and producers and fielded a couple of offers, including one from Warner Bros.
  No producers are attached.
  Klein's pitch for his story garnered strong interested from online publisher Inkshares, and is scheduled to be published this summer. (Authors post a sample or pitch on Inkshares, and if the project gets 750 preorders, the website publishes it, providing the editing, design and distribution services of a traditional publisher.)
  “I read the manuscript at the gym on a Saturday morning last August," said Inkshares head Adam Gomolin. "I saw the property in high def immediately. It’s one of the most clearly constructed near-future worlds since Gattaca, and the man-against-the-machine backbone hits the notes of the Tony Scott thrillers I grew up on like Enemy of the State.”
  Inkshares has a partnership with UTA, which helped the rising tech company in the start-up stage and brokered the movie deal.

Klein, Tal M.: THE PUNCH ESCROW
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Klein, Tal M. THE PUNCH ESCROW Geek & Sundry (Indie Fiction) $14.99 7, 25 ISBN: 978-1-942645-
58-0
In this sci-fi thriller, a man fights for his wife and his lives after he's duplicated in a transporter malfunction.
In 2147, the Last War ended half a century ago. Now the world is run mostly by corporations, which
provide basic needs and run the global economy with the help of nanotechnology, which, among other
advancements, has made human teleportation possible. Narrator Joel Byram is a "salter"--that is, he poses
puzzles to artificial intelligence applications, hoping to stump them and improve their decision algorithms.
He loves '80s pop music and his wife, Sylvia, a quantum microscopy engineer. She works for International
Transport, the company with a monopoly on teleportation thanks to its proprietary Punch Escrow
technology. (Anything teleported is held in "escrow" until its arrival is confirmed; quantum entanglement is
involved.) After a recent promotion, Sylvia has been working on a secret project that eats all her time, and
the couple has drifted apart. Sylvia suggests a 10th anniversary vacation to Costa Rica, their honeymoon
spot and one of the world's few remaining off-the-grid locations. But as Joel is teleporting, a suicide bomber
attacks, and he finds himself still in Greenwich Village, though he's reported dead. At IT headquarters, Joel
learns that Sylvia, already in Costa Rica, has panicked and done the unthinkable: used Escrow technology
to restore him, creating a duplicate Joel. With several well-organized yet shadowy forces arrayed against
them, both Joels must use all their combined experiences in manipulating AIs to rescue each other and
Sylvia and stop a mad genius's nefarious plans. Technology is important to debut author Klein's novel,
particularly the truth about how transportation really works, but character drives the story as much or more.
Throughout, the narrator (whether Joel or Joel No. 2) has an appealing voice and presence. He's funny, a bit
of a smartass, but thoughtful, concerned about his marriage, and, in the face of mortal danger, grimly
determined to d
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Klein, Tal M.: THE PUNCH ESCROW." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192221/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e2c0d84f.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502192221
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Debut of the month
Library Journal.
142.12 (July 1, 2017): p61.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
*Klein, Tal M. The Punch Escrow. Geek & Sundry: Inkshares. Jul. 2017. 300p. ISBN 9781942645580. pap.
$14.99; ebk. ISBN 9781942645597. SF
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
One day in June 2147, Joel Byram suddenly realizes he is going to be late to meet his wife, Sylvia, for their
anniversary. No worries, he will simply pay for a trip via teleportation through a device called the Punch
Escrow. The couple, who had been struggling, partly owing to Sylvia's high-ranking job at International
Transport (the company that controls teleportation), had decided to take a second honeymoon in Costa Rica.
Sylvia arrives safely, but a terrorist attack leads her to assume that Joel is dead. Instead, he is safe in New
York, although desperate to get to his wife. Meanwhile, Sylvia, in her grief, has made an even more
desperate decision to use a secret capability of her company to bring back a stored duplicate of Joel. Now
there are two Joels, and one very angry executive determined to keep his company's secret safe. Footnotes
explain some of the science and societal changes, as the pacing increasingly becomes more propulsive and
our hero gets mired deeper in danger. VERDICT This debut thrill ride will please fans of Blake Crouch's
Dark Matter looking for the next compelling sf technothriller. [Winner of the Inkshares Geek & Sundry
Hard Science Fiction contest, Klein's title is the first to be released from Inkshare's new imprint; film rights
have been acquired by Lionsgate.--Ed.]--MM
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Debut of the month." Library Journal, 1 July 2017, p. 61. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497612704/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=58ff281a.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497612704
First steps: summer titles from first-timers bend the boundaries
Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal. 142.12 (July 1, 2017): p32+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:

[...]

Klein, Tal M. The Punch Escrow. Geek & Sundry: Inkshares. Jul. 2017. 300p. ISBN 9781942645580. pap. $14.99.

When her husband, Joel, doesn't show up for a second honeymoon, grief-stricken Sylvia wrongly assumes that he has been killed in a terrorist attack and uses a technique secretly developed by her company to call forth a stored duplicate of Joel. Bad news. An LJ SF Debut of the month, with movie rights sold. "Compelling." (LJ 7/17)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hoffert, Barbara. "First steps: summer titles from first-timers bend the boundaries." Library Journal, 1 July 2017, p. 32+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497612675/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7843e749. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A497612675
Teleport to a futuristic world in 'Punch Escrow'
Robert Bianco
USA Today. (Aug. 7, 2017): Lifestyle: p03D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

Teleportation seemed like a pretty cool concept until Tal M. Klein got ahold of it.

There's something deeply disturbing about the safest mode of transportation in 2147 in the author's delightful and brainy debut, The Punch Escrow (Inkshares/Geek & Sundry, 356 pp., ***1/2).

Featuring themes similar to Blake Crouch's Dark Matter, the dense sci-fi feel of a Michael Crichton thriller and clever Douglas Adams-like charm, the book posits an intriguing future that is both inviting and horrific.

Joel Byram is a New Yorker who spends his days playing video games for fun and tricking apps into being more human (and therefore more user-friendly) for money. He's also trying to save his marriage to workaholic wife Sylvia, who has a super-secretive gig with International Transport, a powerful company that controls all the teleportation centers.

On the way to Joel teleporting (or "punching," as in the title) to Costa Rica and meeting up with his spouse, an incident causes something to go very wrong, and he's replicated. On two sides of the world, the Joels have parallel stories that ultimately sync up and lead to revealing a deadly secret behind teleportation that, if public, could throw society into chaos.

Klein stuffs his narrative with solid characters, though the impressive world-building does wonders for giving them extra personality. As much as the two Joels are the same person, Klein finds ways to give each one individuality.

There are some serious negative aspects to the 22nd century Klein imagines, but he's also thrown in some positives. Mosquitoes are used as a solution to air pollution. Innovations in 3D printing allow people to re-create whatever they want instead of going shopping. Nanotechnology keeps people extraordinarily healthy. And cars not only drive people around but also sass them -- these conversations lead to some humorous moments.

At the same time, the book digs into the inherent philosophical and ethical questions behind some of these inventions, as well as exploring a fascinating geopolitical landscape. The Last War has created a world of corporate nation-states and united a part of the world previously divided by religion, and out of that comes a group that factors very much into the plot as an opponent of teleportation on moral grounds.

Unless you're a fan of hard science, you might find the lessons in quantum entanglement, genetic engineering and high-end math -- mostly found in footnotes early on -- rather dizzying. Yet it all becomes part of the experience.

The novel makes you think twice about how nice it would be to teleport to a vacation spot, and it's hard not to feel smarter after reading Punch Escrow.

CAPTION(S):

photo Lai Long

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bianco, Robert. "Teleport to a futuristic world in 'Punch Escrow'." USA Today, 7 Aug. 2017, p. 03D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500097626/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0b651201. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A500097626

"Klein, Tal M.: THE PUNCH ESCROW." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192221/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018. "Debut of the month." Library Journal, 1 July 2017, p. 61. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497612704/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018. Hoffert, Barbara. "First steps: summer titles from first-timers bend the boundaries." Library Journal, 1 July 2017, p. 32+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497612675/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7843e749. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018. Bianco, Robert. "Teleport to a futuristic world in 'Punch Escrow'." USA Today, 7 Aug. 2017, p. 03D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500097626/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0b651201. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

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