Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 19
August 11, 2020
Terra Nullius
Terra Nullius is my March 2019 column in Locus magazine; it explores the commonalities between the people who claim ownership over the things they use to make new creative works and the settler colonialists who arrived in various “new worlds” and declared them to be empty, erasing the people who were already there as a prelude to genocide.
I was inspired by the story of Aloha Poke, in which a white dude from Chicago secured a trademark for his “Aloha Poke” midwestern restaurants, then threatened...
August 3, 2020
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 12)
Here’s part twelve of my new reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (you can follow all the installments, as well as the reading I did in 2008/9, here).
This is easily the weirdest novel I ever wrote. Gene Wolfe (RIP) gave me an amazing quote for it: “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read.”
Here’s how my publisher described it when it came out:
Al...
July 27, 2020
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 11)
Here’s part eleven of my new reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (you can follow all the installments, as well as the reading I did in 2008/9, here).
This is easily the weirdest novel I ever wrote. Gene Wolfe (RIP) gave me an amazing quote for it: “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read.”
Here’s how my publisher described it when it came out:
Ala...
July 20, 2020
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 10)
Here’s part ten of my new reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (you can follow all the installments, as well as the reading I did in 2008/9, here).
This is easily the weirdest novel I ever wrote. Gene Wolfe (RIP) gave me an amazing quote for it: “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read.”
Here’s how my publisher described it when it came out:
Alan ...
July 13, 2020
Full Employment
This week’s podcast is a reading of Full Employment, my latest Locus column. It’s a counter to the argument about automation-driven unemployment – namely, that we will have hundreds of years of full employment facing the climate emergency and remediating the damage it wreaks. From relocating all our coastal cities to replacing aviation routes with high-speed rails to the caring and public health work for hundreds of millions of survivors of plagues, floods and fires, we are in no danger of runn...
July 6, 2020
Full Employment
My latest Locus column is “Full Employment,” in which I forswear “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” as totally incompatible with the climate emergency, which will consume 100%+ of all human labor for centuries to come.
https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/
This fact is true irrespective of any breakthroughs in AI OR geoengineering. Technological unemployment is vastly oversold and overstated (for example, that whole thing about truck drivers is bullshit).
July 5, 2020
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 09)
Here’s part nine of my new reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (you can follow all the installments, as well as the reading I did in 2008/9, here).
This is easily the weirdest novel I ever wrote. Gene Wolfe (RIP) gave me an amazing quote for it: “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read.”
Here’s how my publisher described it when it came out:
Alan ...
June 29, 2020
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 08)
Here’s part eight of my new reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (you can follow all the installments, as well as the reading I did in 2008/9, here).
This is easily the weirdest novel I ever wrote. Gene Wolfe (RIP) gave me an amazing quote for it: “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read.”
Here’s how my publisher described it when it came out:
Alan...
June 22, 2020
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 07)
Here’s part seven of my new reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (you can follow all the installments, as well as the reading I did in 2008/9, here).
This is easily the weirdest novel I ever wrote. Gene Wolfe (RIP) gave me an amazing quote for it: “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read.”
Here’s how my publisher described it when it came out:
Alan...
June 14, 2020
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 06)
Here’s part six of my new reading of my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (you can follow all the installments, as well as the reading I did in 2008/9, here).
This is easily the weirdest novel I ever wrote. Gene Wolfe (RIP) gave me an amazing quote for it: “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read.”
Here’s how my publisher described it when it came out:
Alan i...


