/ / Eastern Standard Tribe, News

Corlin has produced a really interesting audio remix of Eastern Standard Tribe:

1) Record a page of text with Apple speech. (voice “Vicky”) No editing this is just a straight read.

2) Run this audio file through “MetaMix”, recording the output again…

MetaMix cuts any audio file into chunks of a set duration then plays these chunks back in a preset algorithmic way.

To make smoother transitions from one chunk to the next, MetaMix actually overlaps up to six chunks at a time. As a new chunks gradually fades in, an older chunk gradually fades out. This not only makes the sound more connected, but it can also create interesting composite textures.

Review:

Joey DeVilla

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.

Review:

Now

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
Review:

Locus

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.

/ / Eastern Standard Tribe, News

Now Magazine, Toronto’s free entertainment weekly, has a great cover story on me this week, with a review of Eastern Standard Tribe.

A reminder: I’ve got two signings coming up in Toronto this week. The first is tomorrow night, at the Merril Collection, 239 College, third floor, 7 pm, 416-393-7748.

The second is on March 27, at Bakka Books, 598 Yonge at Wellesley, 3 to 5 pm. 416-963-9993.

(Some minor errata: My thesis was about fringe culture and the Internet; I got a job programming, not advertising, CDROMs; and the entertainment industry is worth $60 billion, not million; I was considered the best writer in my school workshops, not my professional ones)

Review:

NPR

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.

/ / Eastern Standard Tribe, News

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.
more

Review:

Entertainment Weekly

Clerks meets Startup.com… Tribe is packed with big ideas.

Entertainment Weekly,
March 19, 2004