Eastern Standard Tribe » Reviews

William Gibson

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:46:32 +0000

Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar -- a hard combination to beat (or, these days, to find).

William Gibson,
Author of Neuromancer

Boldtype

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 09:02:47 +0000

The future has caught up with the visions of the original cyberpunk writers -- their virtual communities, online identities, encrypted data packets, communication gadgets, and rampant digital viruses are all here -- and now the future's uncharted territory is about intellectual property and copyright protection. Many of the original cyberpunk crew have retreated to the present and the past, while Cory Doctorow has stepped up to the future.

Oz,
Boldtype

Vector

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 13:11:01 +0000

This book is just so funny, we have deadpan portrayals of physical disaster (fellow bad back sufferers will be wincing along with me at Art's disk problems), and broad satirical sweeps at, among many things, internet trolls, corporate life, mental health professionals, English policemen, interfering mothers and mock-Dickensean villains. Eastern Standard Tribe may be short but it is very sweet - a great rush; like slam-dunking a can of Jolt

San Francisco Chronicle

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 23:00:02 +0000

Unlike the characters in "Down and Out," who could be killed and easily resurrected through advances in nanotechnology, Art and the supporting cast of "Eastern Standard Tribe" are thoroughly mortal, blessed only with "comms," phonelike devices that put incredible computing power at everyone's fingertips. Their vulnerability gives "Eastern Standard Tribe" an urgency and poignancy that Doctorow's first novel lacked. One definitely finds oneself rooting for poor, beleaguered Art, and Doctorow resolves his plight with a satisfying dose of suspense and humor.

Michael Berry
San Francisco Chronicle

Vancouver Sun

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 00:04:04 +0000

While some might consider Doctorow a booster for the online, wired lifestyle, his books contain subtle but pointed warnings about the flaws of high tech societies. Being a Tribalist, living out of circadian synch with the people around you, relating with people you mainly know as a handle on a screen, encourages paranoia and disloyalty, smartness instead of happiness. Art becomes an object lesson in how such a society can ruin a person, and his salvation doesn't lie in technology.

Peter Tupper,
Vancouver Sun

Toronto Star

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 22:45:49 +0000

The power of Eastern Standard Tribe draws on traditional storytelling elements -- tight plotting, sharp characterization and keen thematic treatment. The novel is immediately accessible, the near-future setting all too familiar. Despite the shifting between chronologies and tenses (first- to third-person throughout), Doctorow maintains an unrelenting pace; many readers will find themselves finishing the novel, as I did, in a single sitting.

Robert Wiersema,
Toronto Star

Joey DeVilla

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 07:21:53 +0000

There's a certain casual but insistent forward flow to his writing that makes you want to keep reading. It's rather like the motion of a Haunted Mansion Doombuggy: it shows you something cool, but its wiggle tells you that something cooler is waiting just over there in the next chamber... [The book is full of] argumentative personalities, smooth-talking biz-dev guys and anal-rententive user experience orthos so real that you want to pimp-slap them with a hardcover edition of Tufte.

Joey DeVilla,
The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Now

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 02:42:03 +0000

Cory Doctorow writes fast and furiously, the words gushing out of him in a stream of metaphor and imagery that keeps you glued to his futurist tales...

Doctorow offers characters that are absolutely human. There are no robots here -- these people are sexed up and emotionally charged.

Susan Cole,
Now Magazine, Rating: NNNN

Locus

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 20 Mar 2004 05:04:57 +0000

The first thing you notice when reading Eastern Standard Tribe is that it suggests a methodology that Doctorow follows when building his novels: identify and research a cool new idea, add more and more cool bits to that idea, and then build that into a story. In Down and Out the cool idea was reputation-based economies, and in Tribe it's a new kind of social group emerging that chooses to abandon its local standard time to live and work in stop with another more desirable one...

Damien Broderick, in a recent review, coined the rather amusing term "blogpunk," which seems to very much apply to Doctorow's work. It refers to the tendency of writers of online journals to accumulate fascinating factoids and then share them amongst themselves. And, to an extent, you can see that in Tribe. The novel's background is full of cool things -- cars running on lard and such -- but it's just that, background. At its heart, Tribe is a witty, sometimes acerbic poke in the eye at modern culture. Everything comes under Doctorow's microscope, and he manages to be both up to date and off the cuff in the best possible way.

Jonathan Strahan,
Locus Magazine

NPR

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 05:35:03 +0000

Doctorow peppers his novel with technology so palpable you want to order it up on the web. You'll probably get the chance. But technology is not the point here, merely a fascinating, convincing backdrop for the story. It's a really old story, actually -- boy meets girl. What follows is not unexpected, or even particularly new. What is unexpected, shocking even, is how smart Doctorow is when it comes to the human heart, and how well he's able to articulate it.

This novel feels whiz-bang modern, but Doctorow's prose uses the oldest trick in the book -- utterly direct simplicity. Even when he's explaining a sophisticated system of mobile music swapping, Doctorow comes off like a standup comedian. The insights he offers seem obvious, but only in retrospect. He seems smart because he makes the reader feel smart. When Doctorow talks, when Art argues, we just get it. There's nothing between the language and the meaning. The prose is funny, simple and straightforward. This is a no-bullshit book.

Rick Kleffel
NPR