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More NerdCore Science Fiction From Cory Doctorow
Andrew Leonard writes "Cory Doctorow has published a new short story in Salon. This time around, he's imagined a cyberpunk wi-fi future, with spectrum cops, a mobile multinational startup, and guerilla warfare on Indian reservations. Readers who liked his previous story, "0wnz0red" will undoubtedly savor this one." We've posted things about Cory before, but I personally enjoy his writing, so here's more!
It's always interesting to see how close some of the "predictions" come to real life.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
He's enjoyed a few brief jumps up the best seller lists at Amazon. He's been up to the triple digits. It'd be cool to see him pushed into the double digits.
Wi-Fi is the Never Ending Buzzword (tm)!
Pedro Côrte-Real.
This may be obvious, but try the print layout to skip paging and avoid the huge ads in the middle of the text.
His ability to write is rather average. The underdeveloped characters are stereotypes and he uses excruciating detail to describe minutia which DOES NOT MATTER. Writing involves showing the TELLING details and having a strong sense of POV.
Nowadays, everyone with a computer thinks hes a writer!
Why does everyone with a computer think they're a critic? =P
it would take me hours to read this psycho-babbling plot-less wonder, i'm just here to post a generic comment saying it sucks.
like most sci-fi, crappy drama with some flashing lights thrown it.
Salon has a bunch of good content. Maybe you agree that this story is good. Subscribe!
we all know that Cory is just pharming Whuffie.
check out the Prime Intellect novella-length story
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Why does everyone with a computer think they're a writer? =-Q
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I read 0wnz0red last week -- someone here on /. had a link to it in their sig. One of the great things about Doctorow's sci-fi is the "feasibility" of it. In particular, I wonder how close we really are to the microcontroller that interfaces directly to the human nervous system. Ten years? Twenty? Surely it will happen within our lifetimes (?). When it does, let's just hope that the API is open-source. :)
that many of these things will come true.
Pajonet.com
Plug in the back of your neck = matrix
Programming yourself = Nano's from AO
MIB's and Gmen in the black mesa desert = half life.
I found the story interesting mainly because of the locations. Small details like eating el torito burrito's along the 101, living here in the bay area I know all these spots, it almost makes the story more realistic to me in that sense.
The really interesting thing is seeing how modern writers take what they see now, and apply that to their story.
The whole, healing aids virus thing was a trip, probably the most original thing in the story. Other than that though, the story is just silicon valley facts mixed in with hollywood/gaming fiction.
I liked it though.
Paul Boutin just wrote up Doctorow's novel in this story.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
As other folks have pointed out, this guy's writing is heavy on irrelevant details, and weak on character development (i.e., salient details.) One thing I never figured out on reading 0wnz0r3d (sp?) was which of the two main characters were gay, if either was. It's not the most important detail, but it seems relevant to character development - yet I don't think it's answerable based on the text.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
By that do you mean nerds' porn or nerd porn? Like goatse?
Repeal the DMCA!
This reads like the log from a bad D&D game.
It sounds as if it was ripped directly from a group of people who think 'roleplaying' is equivalent to 'using big words for absolutely no reason'.
*sigh*
People, you don't need a paragraph detailing how some character scratched his nose. Just say he scratched his fucking nose.
This guy obviously listened too eagerly to high school English teachers.
So is this guy related to EL Doctorow, or what? EL had a short story that made it into The New Yorker's "Best of Fiction" issue as well as Best American Short Fiction 2002. Haven't read it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Anyway, maybe Cory has more in him than I give him credit for, if he's got the genetic advantage.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
More self-aggrandizing tripe. This is the crap I churned out in my high school writing class when I was insecure about myself, so the hero was always an idealized me.
Just because you have a blog and hang on to the coat-tails of every popular 'net movement, doesn't mean you're an author worth your salt.
Love,
Jimbo Mofer
Okay, writing about CVS repositories in fiction is just... laughable. (referring to his earlier work, Ownz0r3d).
That's just not going to work, sci fi or not.
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
Well, they just showed a shot of him. Thick black glasses, flat top, blue Star Trek : TOS shirt, no hat.
And oh, the story? I liked it... inconsequential stuff that reminded me a bit of Sterling and his Leggy Starlitz character ("Zeitgeist," anyone?).
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Someone needs to tell the author that the dotcom days are gone and no amount of WiFi bullshit is going to ever bring them back.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Your ability to post a negative comment about someone who has spent a lot of time on something they care about (and giving it away for free) is rather average. It's hardly worth the score 5 you currently have. The over-capitalization of words and excruciatingly uninspired or thought-provoking critique really does not matter.
Nowadays, everyone with a slashdot account thinks they're a critic!
Plug in the back of your neck = matrix Programming yourself = Nano's from AO MIB's and Gmen in the black mesa desert = half life.
All of them together=Deus Ex
Headline should read "Worst BrainDump since Jewel's poetry".
If you want immediate gratification, download the book and send him some money. His email address is on his site. He'll get a heck of a lot more out of that than he will from his publisher, I'll bet.
This guy is worse than Bruce Sterling and JonKatz. I hate these clueless writers trying to glamorize computer culture. Blame Progidy, AOL, etc for letting these guys -- along with housewives and little girls -- get online. I envy the the amateur radio people who have exams and licenses that keep most of these idiots off their turf. Salon sucks too.
...that the vast majority of self-published fiction, which in theory was supposed to break the chains of the boring, musty editorial process and unleash the creative geniuses being forever held just below the waterline, has resulted in nothing but an unending flood of crap?
I started to read this guy's novel and gave up after the first chapter. Horrible, horrible stuff -- but boring horrible, not even the for-laughs horrible that someone like Crad Kilodney would goove on. Just sanctimoniously, self-importantly hip and trendy, which in five years will look horrifically dated.
Sometimes the checks and balances of editorship exist for a reason.
At least Stephenson could be half-way original.
Of course I'm a bit close to the problem...
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Everybody who has more than a couple (dozen?) stories started who are going to finish them "one of these days" please raise your hand. (Ouch, I can't count that high.)
I would argue that the details DO matter. What makes these stories interesting are the technical / political / social concepts each story explores. To better express these concepts, a certain degree of detail is needed.
The trouble is, this detail ends up highlighting a lack of detail elsewhere. There are attempts at fleshing out the world in which these concepts are playing out. But these attempts ultimately fall flat. One example, as has been pointed out, is the commonly underdeveloped character.
Doctorow has a good start. Enough to be kind of interesting now. I hope he improves with time. Then he may be worthy of the breathless praise his critics currently scoff at.
Lee-Daniel flipped the windows to transparent and let the sun shine in, provoking groans from the corporation.
bleh, what drab writing. Provoking just seems to be the wrong word here, in fact I think it might be totally wrong. If I were writing, I would have said something like:
"The driver flipped a switch, and the voltage across the windows went to zero. They became clear, and sunlight flooded into the bus. The corporation didn't like it. It -- they -- groaned."
I wonder if salon would ever publish any of my cyberpunk crap. My guess is this guy knows somebody, his stuff is so boring.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There is a huge difference between 'interesting' and 'syntactically incorrect'. Besides, why exactly is it important for someone to have good grammar when criticizing someone's ability to tell an interesting story?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm pretty sure the most important part of getting a book published is getting a book finished. I'm sure there's a lot of crap that gets rejected, but I'm certan that there's a ton of cool stuff that never gets past the 10th page.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Amen to that. I've started so many stories, of all sorts, drama, sci-fi, Arthurian legend, etc, I can't count. They all are about 3 chapters long, and GOOD, by the opinion of the people who I let read them. It's just getting chapters 4->X on paper which kills me. I can get it started good, just can't close the deal.
Anyone else run into this in the past? How'd you get around it? (If you did)
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
I didn't actualy get very far, because after reading the first few paragraphs I had this feeling that reading about bored people might be boring. I don't know why...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I know, personally, two guys who front as nobodies so they can participate in online discussions without being flooded with fanmail, job applications and gee gosh wow bullshit.
There's also the Maxim girl who chimes in on a certain jokey-newsie site every once in a while. It's funny to watch jackoff artists ignore her posts and two hours later carry on the running gag about how much they lust her.
Penn (as in 'n' Teller) is right, being ignored is the most desirable leisure good. Not that he's Mr. Wonderful. Comparisons to Michael Moore are unstoppable and inevitable.
Subversion is so much more cyberpunk, man.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
He's a published author, which would explain why salon would run this. I wonder if they paid him for it? Doubtfull, given salon's financials.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
My suggestion is try Chapter 2. If you find those people boring too then you just don't like my writing.
No prob with that; I'll deal.
Out of curiosity, is there anybody whose writing you do like?
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I have this brilliant fucking idea for a story. I'll sum it up in sixty seconds, and you'll spend the next three months making it work on paper. Fifty fifty split sounds fair enough, ah?
Meanwhile, back at the evil lair of Closed Source Software...
Yeh, keep bashing him boyo's. He's got a hugo award.
This guy's a hack, and is definitely worse than Katz, which takes some doing.
He's yet another techno-dilettante - except he's also an inept writer in addition to being an inept "technologist." I've seen quotes from this guy in reference to computer security that are quite laughable. Why do technical publications interview dumbass "writers" about security issues instead of interviewing security professionals? Because tools like this guy have suddenly become a "name" in tech. Actual proficiency doesn't matter. Which shouldn't be surprising, considering what we've seen in our industry in the recent past. But I still can't get over it.
Katz picked the perfect time to jump on the techno-bandwagon. He used everybody on slashdot to create hype and sell books. Anyone who thought he was contributing out of altruism was a sap. He used y'all, and he shamelessy exploited the murders of innocent children as well - over and over again.
Now Doctorow is jumping on the techno-babble bandwagon, and people are actually buying into it. It boggles the mind. Anyone with any sort of appreciation for literature or technology knows that the man is a no-talent. He's full of shit. He should not be making money. Do not encourage him.
His free distribution in multiple formats is a cheap gimmick. It'll get media attention, which is all he needs. There's another good reason why why he's giving it away - it's not worth paying for.
Save your money for writers who have a clue, please. Just take a look at the comments here - for once the slashtards have it right. And the arguments of his defenders are glaringly weak ad hominems.
I think that these are some of the best writings available for free and I salute the authors for having the vision to be replacing the now terminated public domain with new rules.
Cory and other authors of his ilk are going to be around a lot longer than the copyright restricted whores to the media machine.
His works are going to live a long time in the digital age.
Flame me if you must, but be constructive.
Someone shoot that moderator. This is a generalization made by an AC who clearly implies that he has not read the story.
Translation for the simple minded: Parent post is a troll.
You may have come across this suggestion already, so I don't know if it'll help, but anyway...
Mystery and crime writers often decide on the end first and then work backwards. I think you can apply this to all kinds of fiction. A story is like a journey, if only metaphorically, and you generally don't embark on a journey without having some idea of where you want to get to.
When I say "the end," I don't necessarily mean what happens in the last chapter, or the last paragraph. Rather, I mean what changes have happened by the time you get to the final page - what results does the story have? For example, if you're writing a story where the good guys face death at every turn, you should decide whether all of them will survive to the end of the book. If you decide to kill one of them off, that could happen in chapter 2, but it would still be one of the results of the story.
Once you've decided what your results will be, you can then decide on a plausible path (aka a plot) that allows all of them to happen. I've used this technique to restart a large fantasy novel which had been languishing for about 10 years while I found excuses to do other things. It's nearly doubled in size (from about 50,000 words to about 90,000), and I've been beavering away at it for some six months now, which is longer than I ever managed to stick at it before.
A site that you may find useful is run by the author Holly Lisle. She has an article describing this technique, plus lots of other good stuff.
Good luck!
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
There is a link to A Casino Odyssey in the Other Stuff Online page of the novel site.
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Yeh, keep bashing him boyo's. He's got a hugo award.
A Hugo award? That must mean that Doctorow is a brilliant writer, then, in spite of the fact that every part of my being says he's overwhelmingly mediocre (granted, I can only read 1/2 of '0wnz0red' - i can almost here him patting himself on the back for being so clever with the title - before i can't go any further). I'll let you know when Avril Levigne sweeps the Grammy's. That will probably mean that she's on par with Mozart.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
I also like Amy Tan, at least I liked the joy luck club. the bonesetters daughter got to be a little dull after a while.
I also really liked The Satanic Verses but I set the book down when the story got really weird (after the two get to that old ladies house )and haven't picked it up since then. Maybe at some point I will.
I don't really read as much as I'd like to though.
I might give your book another chance at some point, but it's mostly a time issue.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Can you quantify what you mean by 'forced'? Well, different people like different writing styles. How about: "The driver turned off the window shades, and sunlight filled the bus. The passengers groaned."
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Earl Wiener, 55, a University of Miami professor of management science,
telling the Airline Pilots Association (in jest) about 21st century aircraft:
"The crew will consist of one pilot and a dog. The pilot will
nurture and feed the dog. The dog will be there to bite the
pilot if he touches anything.
-- Fortune, Sept. 26, 1988
[the *magazine*, silly!]
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