As scary as the future, and twice as funny. In this eclectic and electric collection Doctorow strikes sparks off today to illuminate tomorrow, which is what SF is supposed to do. And nobody does it better.
Cory Doctorow is the future of science fiction. An nth-generation hybrid of the best of Greg Bear, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling and Groucho Marx, Doctorow composes stories that are as BPM-stuffed as techno music, as idea-rich as the latest issue of NEW SCIENTIST, and as funny as humanity’s efforts to improve itself. Utopian, insightful, somehow simultaneously ironic and heartfelt, these nine tales will upgrade your basal metabolism, overwrite your cortex with new and efficient subroutines and generally improve your life to the point where you’ll wonder how you ever got along with them. Really, you should need a prescription to ingest this book. Out of all the glittering crap life and our society hands us, craphound supreme Doctorow has managed to fashion some industrial-grade art.
Cory Doctorow strafes the senses with a geekspeedfreak explosion of gomi kings with heart, weirdass shapeshifters from Pleasure Island and jumping automotive jazz joints. If this is Canadian science fiction, give me more.
He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow!
Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you’re going to find.
Few writers boggle my sense of reality as much as Cory Doctorow. His vision is so far out there, you’ll need your GPS to find your way back.
This is not technically a novel, but rather a collection of my short fiction. This book won the 2004 Starbust Award for Best Canadian Science Fiction Book, and sports a kick-ass introduction by cyperpunk legend Bruce Sterling. Many of the stories in this have won or been nominated for prestigious awards, including the Nebula and Sturgeon awards.
Six of the nine stories are available as a free download in a multitude of formats, as well as a physical object at bookstores everywhere.
Audio edition courtesy of Podiobooks.
Boston Globe, August 2003
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a short novel, only just clocking up two hundred pages. This is an entirely welcome thing at a time when twice that length seems to have become a bare minimum. It’s quick and snappy, pared of all flab. It is not, though it has often been called it, a fun book. This perception is probably due to Doctorow’s sprightly, bantering style. The story itself however is concerned with betrayal and mental breakdown. In this, Paul Di Filippo is right on the money when he identifies Doctorow as being aligned with the axis of serious jocularity (he could also have been describing himself.)
