After a long hiatus, I’m back at my podcast, and to kick it off, I’m reading my 2005 novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, “A miraculous story of secrets, lies, magic and Internet connectivity.” It’s going to take a while — this is a looong book — and I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t re-read this book since it was published, and it’s been enough time that it’s like reading something someone else wrote, which is really cool and fun.
Here’s the Publishers’ Weekly summary:
“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.”
