All About:
News

How to access the original site

/ / News

I built the original craphound.com back in 1999, so that I could send Jim Van Pelt something to link to on his Campbell Awards site. I was the proverbial shoeless cobbler’s son: I had been earning my living on the Web for seven years, but I’d never bothered to build a personal site.

That was before there was anything like a blog-engine for easy management, so I did it all by hand, and I maintained it (or, in fact, didn’t maintain it) by hand for the intervening years.

It’s time to retire the old boy. The site did me well, but it’s an unmanageable mess. If you want to access it still, I’ve left all the old pages online — check them out here (if you must).

Now that I’ve got a sweet, ligthweight content management system on my back-end I’m hoping that I’m going to be able to keep the site more up-to-date, with each new publication and each new interview or press-mention.

Thanks, Mena!

/ / News

Back in 2003, Mena Trott was kind enough to build me a website for my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, putting together a beautiful Movable Type template that was simple, elegant and flexible.

I’ve now implemented variations on that template three more times: for my short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More, for my second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, and now for this re-design of Craphound.com itself (I’ll be re-implementing it again, shortly, for my next novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town).

Each time I re-implement this, I am struck anew by how easy and clean Mena’s design and implementation are. She is truly a virtuosa MT haxx0r, and I’m a lucky man to have had her assistance.

Thanks, Mena!

Mobile speed-reader edition

/ / Eastern Standard Tribe, News

One of the coolest remixes that anyone’s done of my books has been the speed reader that Trevor Smith put together, which flashes the books one word at a time, at high speed, inside a Java applet. Though the words fly past so fast that they practically flicker, they are still readable — there’s some heretofore unsuspected talent buried in our brains for parsing sentences when rendered as rapid-fire flashcards.

Now Crutcher Dunnavant has adapted the speed-reader to run on Java-capable mobile phones, which makes sense: the screen on a handy is just the right size to show one word at a time.

(Thanks, Crutcher!)

SciFi Wire on Nebula Nomination

/ / Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, News

Today’s edition of SciFi Wire (the wire service of the SciFi channel) features an amazing, flattering article about the fact that my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a finalist for this year’s Nebula Award for Best Novel.

Doctorow also tackles morality, cloning, socialism, poverty, the right to die, freedom of choice, hubris and the cult of celebrity in the book. He said he has heard from many Disney people, and the reaction and comments about the book were “all positive. They say I captured the mood and details just right.”

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was released in February 2003 to widespread acclaim. Blog critic Kevin Marks wrote, “About once every 10 years, a science fiction novel appears that redefines the art form. One that describes a world different from our own, but recognizably yours: extrapolated from current trends, but richly evocative of its difference, adding words to the language that needed to be coined.”

The Austin (Texas) Statesman said, “It may be the best debut science-fiction novel since [William Gibson’s] Neuromancer.”

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom went on to win a Locus Award for best first novel. If it wins the Nebula, it will join Neuromancer (1984) as a debut-novel winner.

Down and Out is a Nebula Finalist

/ / Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, News

The final Nebula Award ballot is out and my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a finalist! w00t! The awards ceremony is in Chicago on April 30th — I’ll be there with fingers crossed (check out the tough competition!)

Novels —

Paladin of Souls — Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, Oct03)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom — Cory Doctorow (Tor, Feb03)
Omega — Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov03)
Cloud Atlas : A Novel — David Mitchell (Sceptre, Jan 2004)
Perfect Circle — Sean Stewart (Small Beer Press, Jun04)
The Knight — Gene Wolfe (Tor, Jan04)

Down and Out on the preliminary Nebula ballot!

/ / Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, News

The preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award came out yesterday, and my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is one of six novels that made the first cut. Between now and Feb 15, my colleagues in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will vote on a final ballot. It’s exhilarating to have just gotten this far, but it will be truly amazing if my first novel makes the final ballot. If you’re a SFWA member, I hope you’ll remember the book when your preliminary ballot arrives in the mail!

Paladin of Souls — Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, Oct03)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom — Cory Doctorow (Tor, Feb03)
Omega — Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov03)
Perfect Circle — Sean Stewart (Small Beer Press, Jun04)
Conquistador — S.M. Stirling (Roc, Feb04)
The Knight — Gene Wolfe (Tor, Jan04)

Utne Reader on Whuffie and reputation systems

/ / Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, News

I was interviewed for an article on reputation economies in the current issue of the Utne Reader — the piece is online now!

In the 2003 science fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, author Cory Doctorow imagines a society where all of life’s necessities are free, and market laws such as supply and demand cease to exist for everything else. Instead of trading in a hard currency, citizens living in this “post-scarcity economy” measure their wealth with an ephemeral, reputation-based currency called “Whuffie.” Doing something that benefits the community, like baking a cake or writing beautiful poetry, increases a person’s Whuffie, while causing a traffic accident or publishing clumsy prose can temporarily put you in a virtual poorhouse. Everyone is wired into the Internet via brain implants and can routinely view and modify others’ standing instantly (and free of charge), ultimately making one’s status the subject of majority opinion.

Eastern Standard Tribe coming true?

/ / Eastern Standard Tribe, News

A group of “radio pirates” in the US are making part of Eastern Standard Tribe come true:

Lynch, 31, is one of a handful of iPod owners using the device to transmit FM radio stations from their car. He uses a bumper sticker on the back of his fender that reads “iPod @ 89.1 FM” to let passers-by know how to tune in…

“I put on some profanity. Comedy, R-rated comedy, Chris Rock’s early stuff. Then I called [his friend] up on his cell phone and he was two cars behind me. I said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but somebody up here is broadcasting swear words! Tune to 89.1FM.’ He turns to the station and he’s like, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’ It was a big joke for a few minutes.”

Once a friend suggested using a bumper sticker to advertise the frequency on which he was transmitting, Lynch was off and running. He became his own mini-pirate radio station.

“For four car-lengths around me was this little bubble of â€â€? me! Whatever I wanted to listen to! So I could be listening to Chris Rock talking about dating and meeting women in a club and then the next song go straight to Neil Sadaka.”

(Thanks, Ken!)