News

After the Siege

Winner, 2008 Locus Award for Best Novella

This story appears in my collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, 2007

Elsi (Russian translation), Summer 2006
The Infinite Matrix, January 2007
Comic book in Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now, June 2008

Podcast, Subterranean Press, read by Mary Robinette Kowal, June 2008
Podcast: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Listeners to my podcast heard me read this story, After the Siege, as it was written, shortly after returning home from a family trip to St Petersburg. My grandmother was born there, back when it was Leningrad, and she lived through the Siege of Leningrad as a little girl. She'd never talked to us about those years, but then, walking through Petersburg, she opened up and the stories came pouring out, stories that scared and appalled me. After the Siege is a science fictional re-telling of those stories, with much artistic license.

I gave first publication rights to this story to Esli, the Russian sf magazine that had published some of my stories in translation before. In return, Elsi has given me the Russian text to release under a Creative Commons license. The first English publication will come shortly in the online magazine The Infinite Matrix, which published my story I, Robot and other pieces.

The day the siege began, Valentine was at the cinema across the street from her building. The cinema had only grown the night before and when she got out of bed and saw it there, all gossamer silver supports and brave sweeping candy-apple red curves, she’d begged Mata and Popa to let her go. She knew that all the children in the building would spend the day there — didn’t the pack of them explore each fresh marvel as a group? The week before it had been the clever little flying cars that swooped past each other with millimeters to spare, like pigeons ripping over your head. Before that it had been the candy forest where the trees sprouted bon-bons and sticks of rock, and every boy and girl in the city had been there, laughing and eating until their sides ached. Before that, the swarms of robot insects that had gathered up every fleck of litter and dust and spirited it all away to the edge of town where they’d somehow chewed it up and made factories out of it, brightly colored and airy as an aviary. Before that: fish in the river. Before that: the new apartment buildings. Before that: the new hospitals. Before that: the new government offices.

Before that: the revolution, which Valentine barely remembered — she’d been a little kid of ten then, not a big girl of thirteen like now. All she remembered was a long time when she’d been always a little hungry, and when everything was grey and dirty and Mata and Popa whispered angrily at each other when they thought she slept and her little brother Trover had cried thin sickly cries all night, which made her angry too.

18 Responses to “After the Siege”

1. dan gillis III says:

   August 23, 2006 at 7:50 am

   St. Petersburg is beautiful!
2. Michael Makalkin says:

   August 23, 2006 at 11:13 am

   Esli (If) is by far the greatest Russian SF magazine that publishes Russian and translated works. And it was really nice to see your story in July issue.
3. Hisham says:

   August 26, 2006 at 8:14 am

   Wonderful! This made my weekend :) Thanks Cory!
4. newsBreaks.net » Cory’s After the Siege in Russian, CC licensed says:

   September 16, 2006 at 6:21 pm

   [...] Cory Doctorow: My story After the Siege was first published as a podcast in my feed. It was a science fictional retelling of the stories my grandmother told me about being a little girl during the Siege of Leningrad, stories she related on a family trip to St Petersburg in summer 2005. [...]
5. Ariel says:

   April 6, 2007 at 7:00 pm

   One of the most beautiful and best written stories I've ever read. Thanks for sharing it with the world!
6. Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com >> Blog Archive » Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present says:

   June 18, 2007 at 1:52 am

   [...] My second short story collection is Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, from Thunder’s Mouth Press. It contains six of my favorite, net-centric tales: Printcrime, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, Anda’s Game, I, Robot, I, Row-Boat, and After the Siege. [...]
7. Steve Slater says:

   November 1, 2007 at 3:14 pm

   Fantastic story, taken with the intro: the creative output of family emotions, self disciplined in the can of a jetliner. Absolutly Great, could be the focus of an entire Creative Writing class.
8. Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com >> Blog Archive » Overclocked and After the Siege are Nebula finalists! says:

   April 24, 2008 at 10:41 am

   [...] I’m on the Locus Award ballot — twice! Once for Best Novella for my story After the Siege and again for Best Collection for my book Overclocked. Thanks to everyone who voted for [...]
9. Overclocked >> Blog Archive » Overclocked and After the Siege are Nebula finalists! says:

   April 24, 2008 at 10:42 am

   [...] I’m on the Locus Award ballot — twice! Once for Best Novella for my story After the Siege and again for Best Collection for my book Overclocked. Thanks to everyone who voted for [...]
10. Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com >> Blog Archive » After the Siege wins the Locus Award! says:

    June 21, 2008 at 9:50 pm

    [...] the winners include several of my favorite books of the year — and my novella, “After the Siege — which was collected in my short story collection Overclocked and adapted for comics in my [...]
11. Overclocked >> Blog Archive » After the Siege wins the Locus Award! says:

    June 21, 2008 at 9:50 pm

    [...] the winners include several of my favorite books of the year — and my novella, “After the Siege — which was collected in my short story collection Overclocked and adapted for comics in my [...]
12. After the Siege -- Black Pig - Maiali neri in libertà says:

    June 23, 2008 at 1:43 am

    [...] sera ho letto After the Siege di Cory Doctorow, vincitore nel 2008 del Locus Award for Best [...]
13. My Favorite 10 Short Stories… For Today : gordsellar.com says:

    August 23, 2008 at 7:20 am

    [...] Cory Doctorow’s — yes, novella, but whatever — “After the Seige” [...]
14. Enter the QueuePhone - Waiting for Apple’s 3GS got you down? | TouchMyApps says:

    June 19, 2009 at 10:08 am

    [...] public licence and in print. After the Siege and information about his other works can be found at Craphound, his [...]
15. Aurelie says:

    September 28, 2011 at 12:31 pm

    Hello,
    So which publisher detains the right of the short story, now, please ?

    (I need this information for an academic work. If you need, I can explain in details by email)
16. Cory Doctorow says:

    September 28, 2011 at 9:01 pm

    I don't know what your question means. I hold the rights to the story. Emailing me is probably the best strategy if you have more questions.
17. Aurelie says:

    October 11, 2011 at 11:45 am

    I've sent you an email three weeks ago concerning this question.
18. Cory Doctorow says:

    October 11, 2011 at 11:47 am

    I must have missed it. I still don't know what the question means. Fiction writers don't typically assign copyrights for their work, so any deals I'd made would be time/scope-limited licenses. There are several of those outstanding, and none exclusive.

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