Eastern Standard Tribe

Cory Doctorow

When I finally found Eastern Standard Tribe (official site, with downloads) in the bookstore (Barnes & Noble; that'll teach me to go to Borders all the time), I was quite excited. I'd recently read Doctorow's I, Rowboat in "The Year's Best Science Fiction: 24th Annual Collection" (originally from OverClocked), and I was looking forward to more Doctorow goodness.

Unfortunately, Eastern Standard Tribe didn't speak to me. It's the story of Art, a user-interface designer who gets thrown in a mental asylum for extreme, violent paranoia, and his world of subterfuge and sabotage in the name of his "Tribe", the titular Eastern Standard Tribe.

I think my disappointment stems largely from my preconceptions about what the book would be like. I had, I think, envisioned a story less about subterfuge and more about a society organized around personal timezones, even if it were distributed around the globe, might function.

Overall, not a bad story (and some of the user-interface stuff is interesting), but not one that really interested me.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Cory Doctorow

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (official website, with downloads) is the second Cory Doctorow novel I've read, but the first that I really enjoyed (see my review of Eastern Standard Tribe). It's the first-person account of Jules, a member of the Bitchun Society.

(The Bitchun Society is a post-scarcity ad-hocracy made possible by free, unlimited energy; free, fast cloning; and free, ubiquitous neural-implant network connectivity (whew!) whose primary currency is Whuffie, or reputation.)

Jules, with the help of his girlfriend, Lil, attempts to help his friend Dan—formerly a missionary for the Bitchun Society to the technophobic remnants of the world—regain his reputation so Dan can go out in a blaze of glory, while defending Disney World's Liberty Square, including the famous Haunted Mansion, from an opposing ad-hoc that wants to turn its attractions into simulated rides. All is going well, until Jules is murdered in the Tiki Room, which ticks him off a little.

I think part of the reason I liked this book so much is that, thanks to Steve, I'm fairly familiar with the setting (or, at least, I'm familiar with Disneyland, which is close enough that I get the picture). But the other part is the cool tech: the cloning, the implanted computer and HUD and connectivity that would put today's Japan to shame.

But, ever since reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, I've been wrestling with the concept of personality and identity in a world where everything you are can be backed up and restored in a couple days' time. What does it mean to be Geoff? If I were to make a backup today, "die" tomorrow and be restored, what of that time in-between when I existed and acted but is now irrevocably lost to me? And how do I feel about this? If I were offered, today, the one-time-only opportunity to become a part of the Bitchun society; to have my personality and memories able to be permanently backed up and recorded; granted essential immortality; a clone of myself ready to step in and take my place should anything untoward happen to me; would I take the opportunity? I can honestly say I don't know. There is so much that's amazing about the idea; so much that it would offer, but potentially so much to lose. (Even setting aside questions about security of the system that runs my brain, the sufficiency of the backups created, the issue of impersonation or duplication and, of course, privacy.) And what of the route to get there?

I suppose, in the end, it would be a simple matter of survival: whether I die and am reborn as a clone of myself, or just die, this me will still be dead, but only with the Bitchun Society will some part of me continue on.

Cory Doctorow's AV Club Interview

The Onion's A.V.Club has an interview with Cory Doctorow up, and it's really, really interesting. You should read it. :-)

Some excerpts:

I was going through a season of summer blockbusters, and as a science-fiction prose writer, I go see a lot of science-fiction movies so I can feel bad about the fact that those movies make much more money than I do. So I would go see these techno-thrillers, and the technology was totally wrong. You wouldn't make a movie about ancient Rome in which people were driving hot rods, unless you're Mel Brooks or something. It just doesn't make any sense, right? If the movie is a historical film about Victorian England, you wouldn't egregiously stick a bunch of televisions in the background. But there are all of these movies that are putatively about the technology we all use. In all those Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies and so on, there's technology that we all use. And presumably, from the last word of the screenplay being written to the last cut of the edit being made, hundreds and hundreds of people look at this film who use computers every day. And none of them seem to know that computers actually don't emit a soft chime every time you type.

I was reading some golden-age science fiction, and a recurring theme in golden-age science fiction is lifeboat rules. It's nice to be democratic and all, but eventually, you find yourself in a lifeboat, and you're floating in the middle of the ocean, and someone has to be captain. And the person who goes crazy and decides that the lifeboat would be better off if he stabbed it with his penknife, that person needs to be thrown overboard. And you can't give that person a trial—the captain just needs to do it. ... The problem with this is, you end up in the land of 24, where you contrive these scenarios in which something morally unthinkable is required, and once you admit that there are situations in which morally unthinkable deeds are not only permissible but necessary, then it becomes really easy to just start shoveling inconvenient situations into the "desperate" category. ... And it seems okay on its face—obviously, if there's someone chasing a guy who's planning on blowing up the city with a dirty nuke, we wouldn't want a cop to have to go to a judge to get a warrant to find the information. But when we actually give people those powers, they end up using them for totally trivial things. In the UK, here, we have RIPA ... that's supposed to be exactly that, for catching terrorists. And it turns out that the number-one use of RIPA powers is local councils who use it to acquire the video-camera feed from private video cameras, to catch people who let their dogs crap on the sidewalk.

Reproduce like a Dandelion

Inspired by Cory Doctorow's latest Locus column, Think Like a Dandelion.

Reproduce like a dandelion!
Spread your seed to the internet wind!
Let it take hold where it may;
Let ev'ry shy patch of mind peeking through
Each crack and crevice
Offer it the briefest solace
That it may take root
And bloom
Throwing your seed further and further afield
Upon the wind until,
Like the dandelion,
Your offspring has taken root
In every corner of the globe!

Cory Doctorow on Creative Commons

Cory Doctorow has a pretty good writeup of Creative Commons over on Locus.

More Doctorow, with some Queer

Every time I read Doctorow, I think to myself, "Yeah!" (or, at least, "Hey, that's really interesting") So, here's "In Praise of Fanfic", "The March of the Polygons: How High-Definition Is Bad News for SF Flicks", "You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen", "How Copyright Broke", and "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet," all from Locus Magazine Online.

And, for a perspective on queer publishing and community, Scotty Nola at Queer and Loathing in America writes "Burning Bridges". For the record: I don't read queer books (although I adore science fiction) for exactly the reasons stated in the article: it's always all gays, or dealing with coming out, or blah blah blah gay blah. NOT INTERESTED. Have queer characters, have them be the protagonists, but don't make it the primary focus; I've got enough gay drama as it is! The Front Runner satisfied that itch, thank you very much.

Linky Linky

It's time, once again, to share some of the links I've found whilst trolling the 'tubes.

Cory Doctorow, renowned sci-fi author and blogger, tells us why the 'information economy' isn't about selling information in How Hollywood, Congress, And DRM Are Beating Up The American Economy.

Dresden Codak is a bizarre but extremely compelling scifi/fantasy(?)/surreal webcomic by Aaron Diaz (not the 'Latin sensation', apparently).

Cheetah is a python-based templating engine that I'm seriously considering using, and CherryPy is a python web-framework.

And, of course, there's the Open Letter to Parents Who Bring Their Children to Extremely Violent Horror Films.