All About:
Novels

There were always enshittifiers

/ / Articles, News, Picks and Shovels, Podcast, Red Team Blues

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “There Were Always Enshittifiers,” about the historical context for my latest novel, Picks and Shovels:

It used to be a much fairer fight. It used to be that if a com­pany figured out how to block copying its floppies, another company – or even just an individual tinkerer – could figure out how to break that “copy protection.” There were plenty of legitimate reasons to want to do this: Maybe you owned more than one computer, or maybe you were just worried that your floppy disk would degrade to the point of unread­ability. That’s a very reasonable fear: Floppies were notoriously unreliable, and every smart computer user learned to make frequent backups against the day that your computer presented you with the dread DISK ERROR message.

In those early days, it was an arms race between companies that wanted to control how their customers used their own computers, and the technological guerrillas who produced the countermeasures that restored command over your computer to you, its owner. It’s true that the companies making the “copy protection” (in scare quotes because the way you protect your data is by making copies of it) typically had far more resources than the toolsmiths who were defending technology users.


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Picks and Shovels virtual launch with Yanis Varoufakis and David Moscrop, presented by Jacobin

/ / News, Picks and Shovels, Podcast, Red Team Blues

An ad-card for the virtual launch event, with the cover of Picks and Shovels next to pictures of me, Varoufakis and Moscrop, and the words Jacobin Virtual Book Launch.

This week on my podcast, I bring you the audio from yesterday’s Jacobin virtual book launch for my book Picks and Shovels, with Yanis Varoufakis, hosted by David Moscrop. You have until Monday night to order personalized, signed copies of the book from Los Angeles’s Secret Headquarters (I’m dropping by the warehouse to sign them on Tuesday, on my way to my event at LA’s Diesel Bookstore with Wil Wheaton). See the whole tour schedule (20+ cities and still growing!) here.


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Announcing the Picks and Shovels book tour

/ / News, Picks and Shovels, Red Team Blues, The Bezzle

A list of upcoming dates for my Picks and Shovels tour.

Announcing the Picks and Shovels book tour (permalink)

My next novel, Picks and Shovels, is officially out in the US and Canada on Feb 17, and I’m about to leave on a 20+ city book-tour, which means there’s a nonzero chance I’ll be in a city near you between now and the end of the spring!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

Picks and Shovels is a standalone novel starring Martin Hench – my hard-charging, two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant – in his very first adventure, in the early 1980s. It’s a story about the Weird PC era, when no one was really certain what shape PCs should be, who should make them, who should buy them, and what they’re for. It features a commercial war between two very different PC companies.

The first one, Fidelity Computing, is a predatory multi-level marketing faith scam, run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest, and an orthodox rabbi. Fidelity recruits people to exploit members of their faith communities by selling them third-rate PCs that are designed as rip-off lock-ins, forcing you to buy special floppies for their drives, special paper for their printers, and to use software that is incompatible with everything else in the world.

The second PC company is Computing Freedom, a rebel alliance of three former Fidelity Computing sales-managers: an orthodox woman who’s been rejected by her family after coming out as queer; a Mormon woman who’s rejected the Church over its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and a nun who’s quit her order to join the Liberation Theology movement in the struggle for human rights in America’s dirty wars.

In the middle of it all is Martin Hench, coming of age in San Francisco during the PC bubble, going to Dead Kennedys shows, getting radicalized by ACT UP!, and falling in love – all while serving as CFO and consigliere to Computing Freedom, as a trade war turns into a shooting war, and they have to flee for their lives.

The book’s had fantastic early reviews, with endorsements from computer historians like Steven Levy (Hackers), Claire Evans (Broad-Band), John Markoff (What the Doormouse Said) and Dan’l Lewin (CEO of the Computer History Museum). Stephen Fry raved that he “hugely enjoyed” the “note perfect,” “superb” story.

And I’m about to leave on tour! I have nineteen confirmed dates, and two nearly confirmed dates, and there’s more to come! I hope you’ll consider joining me at one of these events. I’ve got a bunch of fantastic conversation partners joining me onstage and online, and the bookstores that are hosting me are some of my favorite indie booksellers in the world.

BOSTON (Feb 14):

Boskone, 4PM, Westin Boston Seaport District
https://schedule.boskone.org/62/

Brookline Booksmith with KEN LIU, 7PM, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-02-14/cory-doctorow-ken-liu-picks-and-shovels

VIRTUAL (Feb 15):
YANIS VAROUFAKIS, sponsored by Jacobin and hosted by David Moscrop, 10AM Pacific, 1PM Eastern, 6PM UK, 7PM CET
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

MENLO PARK (Feb 17):
Kepler’s Books with CHARLIE JANE ANDERS, 7PM, 1010 El Camino Real
https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow

LOS ANGELES (Feb 18):
Diesel Bookstore with WIL WHEATON, 630PM, 225 26th Street, Santa Monica
https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing

SEATTLE (Feb 19):
Third Place Books with DAN SAVAGE, 7PM, 17171 Bothell Way Northeast #A101 Lake Forest Park
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

TORONTO (Feb 23):
Another Story, 630PM, 315 Roncesvalles Ave
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259

NYC (Feb 26):
The Strand with JOHN HODGMAN, 7PM, 828 Broadway
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779

PENN STATE (Feb 27):
Kern Auditorium, 7PM, 112 Kern Building
https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf

DOYLESTOWN (Mar 1):
Doylestown Bookshop, 12PM, 16 S Main St
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

BALTIMORE (Mar 2):
Red Emma’s, 2PM, 630PM, 3128 Greenmount Ave
https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/

DC (Mar 4):
Cleveland Park Library with MATT STOLLER, 630PM, 3310 Connecticut Ave NW
https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

RICHMOND (Mar 5):
Fountain Bookstore with LEE VINSEL, 6PM, 1312 E Cary St
https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305

AUSTIN (Mar 10):
First Light Books, 7PM, 4300 Speedway/43rd
https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

BURBANK (Mar 13):
Dark Delicacies, 6PM, 822 N. Hollywood Way
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

SAN DIEGO (Mar 24):
Mysterious Galaxy, 7PM, 3555 Rosecrans
https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

BELFAST (Mar 24) (remote):
Imagine! Festival with ALAN MEBAN, 7PM UK
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

CHICAGO, Apr 2:
Exile in Bookville with PETER SAGAL, 7PM, 410 S Michigan Ave, 2nd floor
https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

BLOOMINGTON, Apr 4:
Morgenstern Books, 6PM, 642 N Madison St
https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

AUCKLAND, May 2
Unity Books, 19 High Street, 6PM
https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1320740102199

WELLINGTON, May 3,
Unity Books, 57 Willis Street, 3PM
https://www.unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-events/author-talk-picks-and-shovels-by-cory-doctorow

PITTSBURGH, May 15
White Whale Books, 4754 Liberty Avenue
https://whitewhalebookstore.com/events/20250515

PDX, Jun 20:
Barnes and Noble with BUNNIE HUANG, Lloyd Center
https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062183697-0

LONDON, Jul 1
The Conduit with RILEY QUINN
6 Langley Street
https://howtoacademy.com/events/cory-doctorow-the-fight-against-the-big-tech-oligarchy/

MANCHESTER, Jul 2
Blackwell’s Bookshop, 146 Oxford Road
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1308451968059

I really hope you’ll come out and say hello. I know these are tough times. Hanging out with nice people who care about the same stuff as you is a genuine tonic.

Picks and Shovels Chapter One

/ / Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, Eastern Standard Tribe, News, Overclocked, Picks and Shovels, Podcast, Red Team Blues, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, The Bezzle

The cover of Picks and Shovels, depicting a vintage PC on which a pixelated, sillhouetted male figure is escaping out of the frame.

This week on my podcast, I’ve got Wil Wheaton reading the first chapter of the audiobook of Picks and Shovels, the next Martin Hench novel, which is out next month. Please consider supporting my work by pre-ordering the book as a hardcover, DRM-free ebook, or DRM-free audiobook in my Kickstarter!

The year is 1986. The city is San Francisco. Here, Martin Hench will invent the forensic accountant–what a bounty hunter is to people, he is to money–but for now he’s an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever, one we now take completely for granted.

When Marty finds himself hired by Silicon Valley PC startup Fidelity Computing to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who’ve founded a competitor startup, he quickly realizes he’s on the wrong side. Marty ditches the greasy old guys running Fidelity Computing without a second thought, utterly infatuated with the electric atmosphere of Computing Freedom. Located in the heart of the Mission, this group of brilliant young women found themselves exhausted by the predatory business practices of Fidelity Computing and set out to beat them at their own game, making better computers and driving Fidelity Computing out of business. But this optimistic startup, fueled by young love and California-style burritos, has no idea the depth of the evil they’re seeking to unroot or the risks they run.

In this company-eat-company city, Martin and his friends will be lucky to escape with their lives.


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I’m coming to Los Angeles, Boston, Providence, Chicago, Turin, Marin, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, and Tartu, Estonia!

/ / Red Team Blues, The Bezzle

I’m about to hit the road again for a series of back-to-back public appearances as I travel with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle. I’ll be in Los Angeles, Boston, Providence, Chicago, Turin, Marin, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, and Tartu, Estonia!

I hope to see you! Bring friends!

Catch me at San Francisco Public Library on Mar 13, discussing my new novel “The Bezzle” with Robin Sloan!

/ / News, Red Team Blues, The Bezzle

A pair of black and white photos of me and Robin Sloan, with the cover of my novel 'The Bezzle' between us. It's captioned 'Author: Cory Doctorow, The Bezzle, in conversation with Robin Sloan.'

At long last, the San Francisco stop of the book tour for my new novel The Bezzle has been finalized: I’ll be at the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch on Wednesday, March 13th, in conversation with Robin Sloan!

The event starts at 6PM with Cooper Quintin from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, talking about the real horrors of the prison-tech industry, which I fictionalize in The Bezzle.

Attentive readers will know that this event was finalized very late in the day, and it’s going to need a little help, given the short timeline. Please consider coming – and be sure to tell your Bay Area friends about the gig!

Wednesday, 3/13/2024
6:00 – 7:30
Koret Auditorium
Main Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Come see me on tour! LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Amherst, Torino, Tartu.

/ / Red Team Blues, The Bezzle

A yellow square featuring the stylized title 'The Bezzle' and the image motif from the book's cover (an Escher-esque triangle whose center is filled with bars that imprison a male figure in a suit; two more male figures run up and down the triangle's edges). Beneath this, a list of cities: 'LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Amherst, Torino, Tartu.'

My next novel is The Bezzle, a high-tech ice-cold revenge thriller starring Marty Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant, as he takes on the sleaziest scams of the first two decades of the 2000s, from hamburger-themed Ponzis to the unbelievably sleazy and evil prison-tech industry:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

I’m taking Marty on the road! I’ll be visiting eighteen cities between now and June, and I hope you’ll come out and say hello, visit a beloved local bookseller, and maybe get a book (or two)!

21 Feb: Weller Bookworks, Salt Lake City, 1830h:
https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm

22 Feb: Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, 19h:
https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow

24 Feb: Vroman’s, Pasadena, 17h, with Adam Conover (!!)
https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Cory-Doctorow-discusses-The-Bezzle

26 Feb: Third Place Books, Seattle, 19h, with Neal Stephenson (!!!)
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow

27 Feb: Powell’s, Portland, 19h:
https://www.powells.com/book/the-bezzle-martin-hench-2-9781250865878/1-2

29 Feb: Changing Hands, Phoenix, 1830h:
https://www.changinghands.com/event/february2024/cory-doctorow

9-10 Mar: Tucson Festival of the Book:
https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?action=display_author&id=15669

13 Mar: San Francisco Public Library (with Robin Sloan):
https://sfpl.org/events/2024/03/13/author-cory-doctrow-bezzle

22 Mar: Wendy Michener Memorial Lecture (Toronto):
https://events.yorku.ca/events/wendy-michener-memorial-lecture2024/

24 Mar: Word Books Brooklyn (with Laura Poitras) (NYC):
https://shop.wordbookstores.com/event/word-presents-cory-doctorow

29-31 Mar: Wondercon Anaheim:
https://www.comic-con.org/wc/

10 Apr: UCLA Institute for Law, Technology and Policy, 1215PM (Los Angeles):
https://pages.e2ma.net/pages/1972582/47480

11 Apr: Harvard Berkman-Klein Center, with Randall Munroe
https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/enshittification

12 Apr: RISD Debates in AI, Providence

17 Apr: Anderson’s Books, Chicago, 19h:
https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1

21 Apr: Torino Biennale Tecnologia
https://www.biennaletecnologia.it/evento/come-sfuggire-al-merdocene-e-costruire-un-internet-migliore/

27 Apr: Book Passage Corte Madera, 1PM (Marin County)
https://www.bookpassage.com/event/cory-doctorow-bezzle-martin-hench-novel-corte-madera-store

2 May, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Winnipeg
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337

3 May, Wordfest, 7PM (Calgary):
https://wordfest.com/2024/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2/

4 May, Massy Arts, 6PM (Vancouver)
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/solo-reading-cory-doctorow-the-bezzle-tickets-876989167207

5-11 May: Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival
https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/

6-9 Jun: Media Ecology Association keynote, Amherst, NY
https://media-ecology.org/convention

The Red Team Blues tour: Burbank, SF, PDX, Berkeley, YVR, Calgary, Gaithersburg, DC, Toronto, Hay, Oxford, Nottingham, Manchester, London, Edinburgh, Berlin

/ / News, Red Team Blues

Burbank: Apr 26, 6PM, Dark Delicacies

San Francisco: Apr 30, 2PM, San Francisco Public Library (with Annalee Newitz)

PDX/Cedar Hills: May 2, 7PM, Powell’s (with Andy Baio)

Mountain View: May 5, 7PM, Books, Inc (with Mitch Kapor)

Berkeley: May 6/7, Bay Area Book Fair (with Glynn Washington and Wendy Liu)

Vancouver: May 10, 9:50AM, Open Source Summit

Vancouver: May 10, 6:30PM, Heritage Hall (with Sean Cranbury)

Calgary, May 11, 7PM, Wordfest (with Peter Hemminger)

Gaithersburg, May 20, 3:15PM, Gaithersburg Book Festival

DC, May 22, Public Knowledge Emerging Tech Conference (keynote)

Toronto: May 23, 8PM, WEPFest (with with The Rheostatics’ Dave Bidini, Citizen Lab’s Ron Deibert, and the whistleblower Nancy Olivieri)

Hay-on-Wye: May 27/28, HowTheLightGetsIn

Oxford: May 29, 7PM, Blackwell’s (with Tim Harford)

Nottingham: May 30, 6:30PM, Waterstones (with Christian Reilly)

Manchester: May 31, 6:30PM, Waterstones (with Ian Forrester)

London: Jun 1, 2PM, UCL Peter Kirstein Lecture

Edinburgh: Jun 3, Cymera Festival

London: Jun 5, 7:15PM, British Library (with Baroness Martha Lane Fox)

Berlin: Jun 7, Re:publica keynote (with Rebecca Giblin)

Red Team Blues: Behind the Scenes with Wil Wheaton

/ / Articles, News, Podcast, Red Team Blues

A selfie taken at Skyboat Media, at director Gabrielle de Cuir's workstation, showing Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton; Wheaton is telepresent via a tablet.

This week on my podcast, I bring you some clips of Wil Wheaton’s recording sessions for the audiobook of Red Team Blues, my next novel, an anti-finance finance thriller starring the 67 year old forensic accountant Martin Hench, who specializes in high-tech scams.

I’m currently kickstarting this audiobook, pre-selling audiobooks, ebooks and hardcovers. I have to self-produce my own audiobooks, because Audible – the monopolist audiobook division of Amazon – refuses to carry DRM-free titles like mine.

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Red Team Blues

/ / Articles, News, Podcast, Red Team Blues

The cover for the Tor Books edition of Red Team Blues, which features a male figure sprinting out of a stylized keyhole.

This week on my podcast, I read a selection from my next novel, Red Team Blues, an anti-finance finance thriller about Marty Hench, a 67 year old hard-charging forensic accountant who’s seen every finance scam that Silicon Valley has come up with over the previous 40 years. Marty’s ready to retire, but an old friend pulls him in for one last job, an offer he can’t refuse: recovering the stolen keys to a hidden backdoor in a cryptocurrency system that are worth more than a billion dollars. Recovering the keys turns out to be the easy part: the hard part is surviving the three-way war that is ignited in their wake, between Azerbaijani money-launderers, Mexican narcos, and crooked three-letter agencies.

I’m currently kickstarting a real audiobook of this one, and I’m going into the studio with Wil Wheaton on Monday. If you enjoy my stories, articles and podcasts and want to know how to show your gratitude, please consider backing this kickstarter by pre-ordering an audiobook, ebook, and/or hardcover.


One evening, I got a wild hair and drove all night from San Diego to Menlo Park. Why Menlo Park? It had both a triple-­Michelin-­star place and a dear old friend both within spitting distance of the Walmart parking lot, where I could park the Unsalted Hash, leaving me free to drink as much as I cared to and still be able to
walk home and crawl into bed.


I’d done a job that turned out better than I’d expected—­well enough that I was set for the year if I lived carefully. I didn’t want to live carefully. The age for that was long past. I wanted to live it up. There’d be more work. I wanted to celebrate.

Truth be told, I also didn’t want to contemplate the possibility that, at the age of sixty-­seven, the new work might stop coming in. Silicon Valley hates old people, but that was okay, because I hated Silicon Valley. Professionally, that is.

Getting close to Bakersfield, I pulled the Unsalted Hash into a rest stop to stretch my legs and check my phone. After a putter around the picnic tables and vending machine, I walked the perimeter of my foolish and ungainly and luxurious tour bus, checking the tires and making sure the cargo compartments were dogged and locked. I climbed back in, checked my sludge levels and decided they were low enough that I could use my own toilet, then, finally, having forced myself to wait, sat on one of the buttery leather chairs and checked my messages.

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