All About:
A Place So Foreign and Eight More

About Intro Reviews Buy it Download e-book Acknowledgements

Introduction by Bruce Sterling

/ / A Place So Foreign and Eight More, News

One of the things that pleases me most about this book is the killer intro Bruce Sterling wrote for me. You can read it here.

There has been a chunk of science fiction influenced by Silicon Valley, but “0wnz0red” captures the disturbed inner world of the technically sociopathic. For years now I’ve been searching for a work of science fiction that could only have been written in the 21st century. “0wnz0red” has broken through. This story is fully realized, and it is sarcastic, abrasive, and mind-boggling in a truly novel way. Like Beat writing in its early period, “0wnz0red” has the dual virtues of being both really offensive and genuinely hard for normal people to understand. This work is therefore truly advanced. It deserves an epithet all its own: “Doctorovian.” We should all hope and trust that our culture has the guts and moxie to follow this guy. He’s got a lot to tell us.

The Super Man and the Bugout

/ / A Place So Foreign and Eight More, Stories

Originally published in On Spec, Fall 2001

“It is certainly worth noting that the story in this issue which flagrantly violates the length limit, Cory Doctorow’s ‘The Super Man and the Bugout,’ at close to 10,000 words, is also by far the best story… The story is both very funny, and a portrayal of a quite believable non-human human being.”

– Rich Horton,
Tangent Online

Download the plain text version from Cory_Doctorow_-_The_Super_Man_and_Bugout.txt.

Paste in links to your own versions below.

Return to Pleasure Island

/ / A Place So Foreign and Eight More, Stories

Originally Published in Realms of Fantasy August 1999

“By design or default, something about this story (and I can’t describe exactly what because I don’t know) disturbed me a great deal, though it’s a well-written and unique take on an old tale. Others may find it more palatable. If Doctorow’s intent was to unsettle, he succeeded…”

– J. G. Stinson,
Tangent Online

Download the plain text version from Cory_Doctorow_-_Return_to_Pleasure_Island.txt.

Paste in links to your own versions below.

Craphound

/ / A Place So Foreign and Eight More, Stories

Originally Published in Science Fiction Age, March 1998

Reprinted in:

* Northern Suns
(Tor, 1999, David Hartwell and Glenn Grant, editors)

* Year’s Best Science Fiction XVI
(Morrow, 1999, Gardner Dozois, editor)

* Hayakawa Science Fiction Magazine (Japan)
September 2001

“Like most aliens-mingling-with-human-society stories, Doctorow’s story serves mostly to hold a mirror up to human nature, but the odd corner of human nature it examines is fascinating, and the story is smoothly and expertly written, with some good detail and local color and some shrewd insights into human nature and human culture, and an almost Bradburian vein of rich nostalgia running through it (although the nostalgia is quirky enough that perhaps it might more usefully be compared to R.A. Lafferty or Terry Bisson than to Bradbury).”

– Gardner Dozois
Editor, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

Download the plain text version from http://craphound.com/place/Cory_Doctorow_-_Craphound.txt.

Paste in links to your own versions below.

Get a signed copy shipped to your door

/ / A Place So Foreign and Eight More, News

Update, Feb 29, 2004: Sadly, I no longer live close to Borderlands, the bookstore that was shipping inscribed copies for me — in fact, I now live 9,000 miles away! However, Borderlands still has a large supply of signed books and bookplates, and is happy to keep on selling them via mail-order wtih no shipping costs.

Looking for a signed copy of A Place So Foreign and Eight More? By a happy coincidence, I live a couple blocks from Borderlands Books, an excellent science fiction bookstore in San Francisco that is happy to do mail-order.

So, if you’re interested in a signed copy, you can call (888.893.4008), fax (415.824.8543), or email your order to the store, and they’ll send you a copy (while supplies last!). There is no charge for media-mail shipping within the continental US.
Priority mail in the US will be $6.00 (that’s delivery within three
days or so). International will be Global Priority for $10 to Canada or
$12 elsewhere. To get the free shipping, just mention that you heard
about it here.

FAQ

/ / A Place So Foreign and Eight More, News

Q: Can’t I just send some money to you by PayPal instead of buying the book?

A: You don’t have to buy the book, but I’m not interested in tipjar payments. I’m not doing this to compete with my publisher. If you read the ebook and want to pay me back, but don’t have any use for the dead-tree edition, the best way you can do that is to buy a copy of the book and donate it to a school, library or community center. If you do this, you’ll put a copy of the book on the shelf where it might be read, I’ll get a royalty, and my sales-figures will go up (which means that I’ll get a bigger advance on my next book and my publisher will be more likely to want to repeat the experiment).

Review:

Locus

Cyberpunk isn’t dead. It has just lost some of its more superficial, passé punkishness (the leather jackets and the mirrorshades) and continues to evolve, rather than settling into the wax museum of old trends. The greatest challenge may be generational. Where Gibson and his fellows served as pioneers back in the 20th century, the real world is catching up and this century’s cybernauts feel far more at home in the territory. But what IS “home” in a time of accelerating change and strangeness? In his first collection A PLACE SO FOREIGN AND EIGHT MORE, Cory Doctorow pursues that question through the wild twists and turns of past, present and future, equipped with the literary tools to make it matter.

Farren Miller,
Locus Magazine,
Sept 2003