Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 27
October 26, 2019
Can we change our politics with science fiction? A conversation with the How Do You Like It So Far podcast
Henry Jenkins (previously) is the preeminent scholar of fandom and culture; Colin Maclay is a communications researcher with a background in tech policy; on the latest episode of their “How Do You Like It So Far” podcast (MP3), we had a long discussion about a theory of change based on political work and science fictional storytelling, in which helping people imagine a better world (or warn them about a worse one) is a springboard to mobilizing political action.
October 22, 2019
Talking science fiction, technological self-determination, inequality and competition with physicist Sean Carroll
Talking science fiction, technological self-determination, inequality and competition with physicist Sean Carroll
Sean Carroll is a physicist at JPL and the author of many popular, smart books about physics for a lay audience; his weekly Mindscape podcast is a treasure-trove of incredibly smart, fascinating discussions with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
The latest episode (MP3 is a 1h+ interview with me, on wide-ranging subjects from adversarial interoperability, inequality and market concentr...
October 21, 2019
Materiality: a new science fiction story for the Oslo Architecture Triennale about sustainable, green abundance
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my short story “Materiality,” which was commissioned for Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, a book edited by Edwina Attlee, Phineas Harper and Maria Smith that is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale.
The editors pitched me on writing a story about sustainability and de-financialization in architecture, and I asked them if they’d be OK with someone who is both an environmentalist and pro-abundance — in the mode of Leigh Phillips’s groundbreaking Aust...
Talking corruption, technology, empiricism and fairness with the Bitcoin Podcast
I’m something of a Bitcoin skeptic; although I embrace the ideals of decentralization and privacy, I am concerned about the environmental, technological and social details of Bitcoin. It was for that reason that I was delighted to spend a good long time chatting with the hosts of the Bitcoin Podcast (MP3), digging into our points of commonality and difference; despite a few audio problems at the start, the episode (and the discourse) were both fantastic.
October 18, 2019
Crowdfunding a symposium on a green, postcapitalist economics in Brussels, Nov 11
On November 11, the Edgeryders nonprofit assocation is bringing me to Brussels for a day-long event called The Science Fiction Economics Lab, where I’ll be jointly keynoting with Edgeryders economist Alberto Cottica, a lifelong science fiction fan, about radical futuristic economic ideas for a more cooperative, sustainable future.
It’s a stage-setting exercise that then leads into an Extinction Rebellion workshop called “Rec...
October 14, 2019
False Flag
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Green European Journal short story about the terrible European Copyright Directive which passed last March, False Flag. Published in December 2018, the story highlights the ways in which this badly considered law creates unlimited opportunities for abuse, especially censorship by corporations who’ve been embarassed by whistleblowers and activists.
The crew couldn’t even supply their videos to friendly journalists to rebut the claims from the big corpora...
October 11, 2019
Part two of my novella “Martian Chronicles” on Escape Pod: who cleans the toilets in libertopia?
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Last week, the Escape Pod podcast published part one of a reading of my YA novella “Martian Chronicles,” which I wrote for Jonathan Strahan’s Life on Mars anthology: it’s a story about libertarian spacesteaders who move to Mars to escape “whiners” and other undesirables, only to discover that the colonists that preceded them expect them to clean the toilets when they arrive.
Last night, they published the conclusion in part two (MP3) of Adam Pracht’s reading of the story, along with some lo...
October 7, 2019
Why do people believe the Earth is flat?
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Globe and Mail column, Why do people believe the Earth is flat?, which connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise in actual conspiracies, in which increasingly concentrated industries are able to come up with collective lobbying positions that result in everything from crashing 737s to toxic baby-bottle liners to the opioid epidemic.
From climate denial to anti-vax to a resurgent eugenics movement, we are in a golden age of terrible conspi...
Revealing the cover of “Poesy the Monster Slayer,” my first-ever picture book!
Firstsecond (publishers of In Real Life, the bestselling middle-grades graphic novel Jen Wang and I made) have just revealed the cover for Poesy the Monster Slayer, my first-ever picture book, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller and scheduled for publication in July 2020.
Poesy is a book about a little girl who is obsessed with monsters, who uses her deep knowledge of monsters’ weaknesses to repurpose her toys — a princess tiara, bubblegum-scented perfume, a doll-house’s roof, and more — as fie...
October 4, 2019
“Martian Chronicles”: Escape Pod releases a reading of my YA story about rich sociopaths colonizing Mars
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Back in 2011, I wrote a young adult novella called “Martian Chronicles,” which I podcasted as it was in progress; it’s a story about the second wave of wealthy colonists lifting off from climate-wracked, inequality-riven Earth to live in a libertarian utopia on Mars.
The story (part of a series of that use titles of famous stories as ) was published in Jonathan Strahan’s excellent YA anthology Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier.
Now, it’s getting a second li...
