Part one of the podcast of Cory Doctorow’s story “Shadow of the Mothaship,” initially published in Amazing Stories magazine, Winter 2000, reprinted in A Place So Foreign and Eight More, Four Walls Eight Windows Press 2003. A strange, stylised Scientology/Alien-Invasion/Oedipus story.
Monthly Archives::
April 2006
Just found out that three of my works from 2005 are finalists for this year’s Locus Award: Best Fantasy Novel (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town), Best Novella (Human Readable) and Best Novelette (I, Robot). Thanks to everyone who voted for me — fingers crossed for the win in one or more of those catgories! Link
My story Anda’s Game has been translated into Russian, and my interview with Ray Kurzweil has been translated into Italian. Anda’s Game was translated for publication in Game.EXE, a Russian gamer mag; the Kurzweil interview was translated by Giovanni Elia, a generous reader. I’ve released both translations under Creative Commons by-nc-sa licenses — copy ’em, play with ’em, just don’t charge money for ’em.
Review:
Gene Wolfe
SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book
you’ve ever read.
Gene Wolfe, author
Review:
Publishers Weekly
It’s only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow’s fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he’s the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being�or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist’s plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who’s now resurrected and bent on revenge. Life gets even more chaotic after he becomes the lover and protector of the girl next door, whom he tries to restrain from periodically cutting off her wings. Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe) treats these and other bizarre images and themes with deadpan wit. In this inventive parable about tolerance and acceptance, he demonstrates how memorably the outrageous and the everyday can coexist.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An article and a short story of mine from Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine have been translated into Spanish and I’ve released the translations under Creative Commons licenses.
When the Singularity is More Than a Literary Device: An Interview with Futurist-Inventor Ray Kurzweil (pub. June 2005) was translated by Domingo Santos as Cuando La Singularidad Es Más Que Un Recurso Literario: Una Entrevista Con El Inventor-Futurista Ray Kurzweil.
NIMBY and the D-Hoppers, a short story (pub June 2003), was translated by Sebastián Castro as Nimby Y Los Saltadimensiones. Other languages this story has been translated into: French, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew.
They’re both released under Creative Commons By/Share-Alike/Noncommercial licenses that allow you to make your own stuff out of them provided you don’t do so commercially.
I’ve accepted a Fulbright Chair at the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, starting this August. I’ll be researching and writing a book on DRM called SET TOP COP: HOLLYWOOD’S SECRET WAR ON AMERICA’S LIVING ROOMS and teaching a course on the same subject.
I’m really, really excited about this! I’m moving to Los Angeles for a year, and I’ll be dipping my toe in academic waters with more seriousness than I’ve had since I dropped out of the University of Waterloo to program CD ROMs for Bob Stein’s Voyager Company, ten years ago (Small world: Bob’s also at USC).
Even more exciting is the idea of being able to teach and write about this subject that’s so important to me. I think the world has yet to see a really cogent book on how DRM is bad for democracy, speech, and discourse — how it turns technology from something that enables into something that denies. This has profound implications for public diplomacy, and for communications, which is why the USC Annenberg School for Communication is also sponsoring my position at USC.
I’m even planning on trying to transplant the London Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shops (where we have a fake-Champagne brunch and give speeches on copyright at Speakers’ Corner) to Venice Beach, substituting Bible-bashers for roller-bladers.
Review:
Neil Gaiman
Cory Doctorow straps on his miner’s helmet and takes you deep into the caverns and underground rivers of Pop Culture, here filtered through SF-coloured glasses. Enjoy.
Neil Gaiman,
Author of American Gods and Sandman
Author of American Gods and Sandman
I’m giving a talks in three Australian cities in April — hope to see you!
April 13-17: Brisbane — Guest of Honour, ConJure, the Australian national science fiction convention
April 18: Melbourne — Speaking at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 7PM, AU$15/13 conc (at Federation Square, Flinders Street)
April 19: Sydney — Speaking at Greater Union Bondi Junction, 7PM, Free (Level 6, 500 Oxford Street, Westfield Bondi Junction)
