Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 50

See you tonight in Austin! (then Houston, Scottsdale, San Diego…) (!)

We had a fantastic event last night at Denver’s Tattered Cover — thanks to everyone, especially the Denhack crew, for making it so great — and now I’m headed to the airport to fly to Austin for an event tonight at Bookpeople with a special guest appearance from EFF-Austin!

Tomorrow night I’m at Houston’s Brazos Bookstore, before heading to Phoenix/Scottsdale where I’ll be onstage with Brian David Johnson, then on to San Diego, Portland (with Andy Baio), Seattle (with Neal Stephenson), Be...

Wrapping up the Crooked Timber seminar on Walkaway: Coase’s Spectre

Two weeks ago, the excellent Crooked Timbre groupblog kicked off a symposium on my novel Walkaway, inviting ten scholars, practitioners, activists and thinkers to weigh in on the novel with thoughtful, sometimes sharply critical essays.

Today, Crooked Timber publishes my response, an essay called “Coase’s Spectre,” about the underlying themes of the novel (as I see them), and whether novels even have themes, and whether the authors are at all qualified to identify them.

I am a Coasean...

See you tonight in Denver! (then Austin, Houston, Scottsdale…) (!)

Thanks to all of you who came out to my tour-stop last night for Walkaway at Winnipeg’s McNally Robinson bookstore — what a fine time we had! Now I’m leaving for the airport to fly to Denver, where I’m appearing at Tattered Cover at 7PM.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at Austin’s Book People, before heading to Houston, Phoenix/Scottsdale, San Diego, Portland (with Andy Baio), Seattle (with Neal Stephenson), Bellingham, Vancouver and Burbank (full details on the US/Canadian tour schedule).

Then I head...

See you tonight in Winnipeg! (then Denver, Austin, Houston…) (!)

Thanks to everyone who’s come out for the Walkaway tour so far! Tonight, I’ll be appearing at Winnipeg’s McNally Robinson bookstore, then it’s off to Denver’s Tattered Cover, Austin’s Book People and Houston’s Brazos Bookstore.

From there, the tour takes me to Scottsdale/Phoenix (where I’m appearing with Brian David Johnson), San Diego, Portland (where I’m appearing with Andy “Waxy” Baio), Seattle (where I’m appearing with Neal Stephenson), Bellingham, Vancouver and Burbank — the US/Cana...

How to support a writer’s career

Since the earliest days of my novel-writing career, readers have written to me to thank me for my books and to ask how they can best support me and other writers whose work they enjoy. Nearly 15 years later, I have a pretty comprehensive answer for them!

Writers’ commercial and critical fortunes are intertwined: a writer whose books perform well is a writer whose publisher buys and promotes more books from them, creating a virtuous cycle, as promotions beget more sales and more promotions...

My column about Snowden, surveillance and WALKAWAY in the International Business Times

I have a column in today’s International Business Times: Unchecked Surveillance Technology Is Leading Us Towards Totalitarianism, where I discuss this week’s NYPL event with Edward Snowden and how mass surveillance connects to the themes in my novel Walkaway.

In my science fiction novel Walkaway, I see an optimistic escape from the looming surveillance disaster. It imagines people oppressed by surveillance might “walk away” and found a parallel society where citizens’ technological know...

A chat with the NEA, about WALKAWAY and sundry subjects

The National Endowment for the Arts podcast recorded a great, wide-ranging interview with me (MP3) about my novel Walkaway and a variety of subjects, from copyright reform to arts funding to the future of the arts and technology.

Chicagoans! Where to find me and Max Temkin on the Walkaway tour!

On Sunday, I’ll be appearing at Chicago’s Volumes Books with Max “Cards Against Humanity” Temkin, as part of the Walkaway tour (which includes stops tonight in Chapel Hill at Flyleaf Books with Mur Lafferty; tomorrow in Cincinnati at Joseph Beth; and more dates in Winnipeg, Denver, Austin, Houston, Scottsdale/Phoenix, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Bellingham, Vancouver and Burbank, before I head to the UK).

I bring it up again both as a friendly reminder and because there’s been a venue ch...

Weaponized narrative: the stories we tell change our theories about the world

My latest Locus Magazine column is Weaponized Narrative, about the pulp fiction convention of mashing up “man against nature” stories with “man against man” stories to tell “man against nature stories” (first the tornado smashes your house, then your neighbors come over to eat you).

These stories only work if you suspend your disbelief about what actually happens in times of crisis, what the evidence shows: that people rise to the occasion, cover themselves in glory, pitch in and help one...

Walkaway tour! Richmond, Chapel Hill, Cincinnati, Chicago and more!

I’m in New York City today for the Walkaway tour and the event — an onstage conversation with Edward Snowden — is sold out (you can watch the livestream free, starting 7PM eastern), but there’s still space at my upcoming events.

I’ll be at Richmond, VA’s Fountain Bookstore at 6:30PM on May the 4th (yes, Star Wars day!), then Chapel Hill’s Flyleaf Books on May 5 with the amazing Mur Lafferty, then Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati, and then Chicago for an on-stage event with Cards Again...