I’m going to be in Boston next week for a gig as an MIT artist-in-residence, a bunch of meetings, some public talks and Boskone, the northeastern regional science fiction convention, where I’m going to be a special guest. I hope to see you there! Here are the public events I’ll be at:

Monday, February 13, 2006, 5PM
Down and Out at MIT: An Evening with Cory Doctorow
MIT Bartos Theater (E15), 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Sponsored by MIT Comparative Media Studies, MIT Office of the Arts

Wednesday, February 15, 2006, 6PM
Set Top Cop:
Hollywood’s Secret War on Your Living Room
Harvard Emerson Hall, Rm 105
Sponsored by Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Computer Society, Harvard FreeCulture

Thursday, February 16, Noon
0WNED — How Hollywood Plans on Making the Future Subservient to the Past
Olin Auditorium, Olin College, Needham, MA

Friday, February 17, 2006, 7PM
Trends in SF Publishing: Technology
Panel at Boskone with James Patrick Kelly, Clayton L. McNally, Steve Miller and Don Sakers

Saturday, February 18, 2006, 10AM
Special guest talk at Boskone

Saturday, February 18, 2006, 1PM
Reading at Boskone

Saturday, February 18, 2006, 4PM
Technology Today!
Panel at Boskone with Tobias Buckell, Ernest Lilley, Edie Stern and Alicia Kestrel Verlager

Saturday, February 18, 2006, 5PM
Blogs, Boing Boing, and Beyond
Panel at Boskone with Kathryn Cramer, Daniel P. Dern, MaryAnn Johanson, Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Sunday, February 19, 2006, 10AM
Kaffeeklatsch

Sunday, February 19, 2006, 11AM
Booksigning at Boskone

Sunday, February 19, 2006, Noon
Intellectual Property: Public Domain Issues
Panel at Boskone with Deb Geisler and Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Sunday, February 19, 2006, 2PM
Cyborgs: After Man, and Beyond
Panel at Boskone with Robert I. Katz, Karl Schroeder, Charles Stross and Alicia Kestrel Verlager

The Locus Awards ballot is online, where science fiction fans can vote on their favorite works of 2005. I’m proud to report that I’m eligible in three categories: Best Fantasy Novel (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town), Best Novella (Human Readable) and Best Novelette (I, Robot).

The ballot is drawn from the Locus Recommended Reading List, which is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the best work published in the field this year.

I’ll be speaking at the LIFT conference later this week in Geneva. My session is on Thursday, 2 February, at 1:30PM, on DRM and the European Broadcast Flag. Also at the event are Bruce Sterling, Robert Scoble, Euan Semple, Bruno Giussani, Xavier Comtesse, Régine Debatty, Anina, Jeffrey Huang, Matt Jones, Chris Lawer, Hugh Macleod, David Galipeau, Aymeric Sallin, Paul Oberson, Jean-Luc Raymond and a ton of other amazing people. Hope to see you there, too!

When: 2006, February 2 and 3 (that would be Thursday and Friday)

Where: The conference will be held at the International Conference Center (CICG) of Geneva, Switzerland.

The attendee list is full, but there’s a waiting list if you’re game.

LIFT is organized around five major topics, or tracks.

Big ideas — From co-creation to citizen journalism via the copyright-less economy, technology and communications are changing the rules. Big ideas are those that concern us all.

Design — Design is about making the life of people better. We’ve invited designers from across the spectrum of design, from strategy to pixels, from screens to devices, from business structures to experiences.

Emerging technologies — From RFID (the identification chips embedded in all objects) to nano tech, we are going to discuss technologies that are just starting to create an impact on our world. Folks from the labs are going to take off their white coats and tell us what’s coming.

Global Solidarity — Geneva is not only the place that saw the web come to life. It is also a major humanitarian center of excellence with hundreds of organizations having their headquarters around the lake. We invited speakers representing this constantly evolving field, in which solutions to complex problems don’t merely improve lives, but save them.

Internet — Last but not the least, the spine of all of the above. It gave many of us our careers, our passions, and it sustains much of our daily life. We are inviting speakers who are pushing the evolving definition of what the Internet is and can be.

I’ve made Locus’s recommended reading list for 2005 in three different categories. I’ve score a recommendation for best novel for Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, for best novella for Human Readable, and for best novelette for I, Robot. This is wonderful, flattering news!

Here’s the introduction Javier Candeira wrote for Tocando Fondo, the Spanish edition of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom — Javier kindly sent me an English translation of the piece. I think it’s just awesome (and awfully flattering!).

The cure for death and the death of work (and free energy). The
opening line of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is fit for inclusion
in one of those novel-opening-line antologies that kids are so crazy
about nowadays. Like Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of
Solitude (“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel
Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his
father took him to discover ice.”) or Jane Austen in Pride and
Prejudice (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man
in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”), Cory
Doctorow starts off with a perfect pool shot: he considers the vantage
point of his preferred audience members, he sets the balls on the
table in an alegorical figure, he makes his main character the cue
ball and, with a steady pulse, strikes him and sends him in the right
direction, bouncing against the world and the rest of the characters,
achieving his desired effect

more

My first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, has just been published in Spain as Tocando Fondo, and in Japan as マジック・キングダムで落ちぶれて ハヤカワ文庫SF.

There’s lots to like about both editions, but my favorite things are one, Javier “Barrapunto” Candeira’s kick-ass introduction to Tocando Fondo, and two the amazing cover on the Japanese edition.