Eastern Standard Tribe
Cory Doctorow
Copyright 2004 Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com
http://www.craphound.com/est
Tor Books, March 2004
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=======Blurbs:=======
"Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar — a hard combination to beat(or, these days, to find)."
- William Gibson,
Author of Neuromancer
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"Cory Doctorow knocks me out. In a good way."
- Pat Cadigan,
Author of Synners
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"Cory Doctorow is just far enough ahead of the game to give you that authenticchill of the future, and close enough to home for us to know that he's talkingabout where we live as well as where we're going to live; a connected worldfull of disconnected people. One of whom is about to lobotomise himself throughthe nostril with a pencil. Funny as hell and sharp as steel."
- Warren Ellis,
Author of Transmetropolitan
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=======================A note about this book:=======================
Last year, in January 2003, my first novel [ http://craphound.com/down ] cameout. I was 31 years old, and I'd been calling myself a novelist since the age of12. It was the storied dream-of-a-lifetime, come-true-at-last. I was and amproud as hell of that book, even though it is just one book among many releasedlast year, better than some, poorer than others; and even though the print-run(which sold out very quickly!) though generous by science fiction standards,hardly qualifies it as a work of mass entertainment.
The thing that's extraordinary about that first novel is that it was releasedunder terms governed by a Creative Commons [ http://creativecommons.org ]license that allowed my readers to copy the book freely and distribute it farand wide. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the book were made and distributedthis way. *Hundreds* of *thousands*.
Today, I release my second novel, and my third [http://www.argosymag.com/NextIssue.html ], a collaboration with Charlie Strossis due any day, and two [http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/show.html?fn.preview_doctorow ] more [http://www.craphound.com/usrbingodexcerpt.txt ] are under contract. My career asa novelist is now well underway — in other words, I am firmly afoot on a longroad that stretches into the future: my future, science fiction's future,publishing's future and the future of the world.
The future is my business, more or less. I'm a science fiction writer. One wayto know the future is to look good and hard at the present. Here's a thing I'venoticed about the present: MORE PEOPLE ARE READING MORE WORDS OFF OF MORESCREENS THAN EVER BEFORE. Here's another thing I've noticed about the present:FEWER PEOPLE ARE READING FEWER WORDS OFF OF FEWER PAGES THAN EVER BEFORE. Thatdoesn't mean that the book is *dying* — no more than the advent of the printingpress and the de-emphasis of Bible-copying monks meant that the book was dying— but it does mean that the book is changing. I think that *literature* isalive and well: we're reading our brains out! I just think that the complexsocial practice of "book" — of which a bunch of paper pages between two coversis the mere expression — is transforming and will transform further.
I intend on figuring out what it's transforming into. I intend on figuring outthe way that some writers — that *this writer*, right here, wearing myunderwear — is goin