Separating Ourselves From Our Culture
Last week I had the pleasure of catching up with Cory Doctorow over a breakfast orders of magnitude more healthy than the last meal we had shared. I’ve been fascinated by Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory’s third book, which someone called “the weirdest book I’ve ever read.” It’s not obvious; it’s clearly [...]
“Little Brother” Release
Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother has been released, and if happen to have anyone in the teenage (oops, Milennial) generation in your house, make this required reading. Doctorow loves to borrow titles and ideas from his favorite writers, turn them on their proverbial listening ear, and remix them with his own view of near-present reality, and [...]
Passover as the First Eco Event
We’re deep in the throes of the Jewish holiday of Passover, a celebration of the Exodus from Egypt, of freedom from slavery, and of the rebirth of spring. Capping the narrative of the Israelites’ escape is the chronology of the ten plagues, a series of disasters including rivers of blood, wild beasts, hail, locusts, cattle [...]
Locus Magazine Recommended Reading for 2007
Every year Locus magazine, the trade journal for science fiction and fantasy writers, puts out a recommended reading list. I usually end up reading about half of it, sometimes based on re-inforcements from sources like Cory Doctorow (himself a frequent name dropped on the list), BoingBoing or a nod from another author whose work I [...]
The 2007 List
Presenting the fourth installment in a continuing series dating back to 2004: the 2007 list. Best Parenting Moment: Son Benjamin’s Bar Mitzvah, celebrated with lots of friends and family. He made us cry, he made his hockey coaches cry (something I hadn’t seen before) and he played a mean guitar solo with the band. Best [...]
Cory Doctorow Comics
Combining my love for off-beat comics with an overtly fan-boy consumption of Cory Doctorow led me to my own Brighton Beach Memoirs moment of perfect mash-ups: I’m now in possession of the first three Cory Doctorow comic books based on his short stories. The artwork is fantastic, the realizations of the characters contain enough subtle [...]
Chasing Perfection
Spoiler alert for Cory Doctorow’s “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” Someone asked for my favorite output of Cory Doctorow’s. Easy choice for me, as it’s the short story “Craphound,” the lead-off entry in the “Place So Foreign” short story collection and the piece that lends its name to Cory’s website. I love Craphound because of the [...]
ACM Queue interview with Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow and I got to sit down back in February for a long chat about privacy, security, device telemetry, emulation, stimulation and who inflicts (or tries to) policy, control and editorial stance on what you see online. It was a fun romp through the strange intersection of science, science fiction and digital rights. The [...]
Podcast of Cory Doctorow’s “Craphound”
Still in the halo of my Doctorow breakfast yesterday, today I received a pointer to a podcast of Cory’s short story Craphound. It’s a great reading of a great story; it’s the story that turned me from mild fan into sincere fanatic. It’s Garrison Keillor with aliens. It’s the best reminder of my childhood in [...]