Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 51
April 28, 2017
Extreme wealth inequality will always devour the societies that produce it
My new novel Walkaway (US tour/UK tour) is set in a world that is being torn apart by out-of-control wealth inequality, but not everyone thinks that inequality is what destabilizes the world — there’s a kind of free-market belief that says the problem is really poverty, not inequality, and that the same forces that make the rich richer also lift poor people out of misery, delivering the sanitation, mass food production, communications tools and other innovations that rescues poor people from...
April 26, 2017
Announcing the official UK Walkaway Tour!
My UK publisher, Head of Zeus, has published the official tour schedule for the British tour for Walkaway, with stops in Oxford (with Tim Harford), London (with Laurie Penny), Liverpool (with Chris Pak), Birmingham, and the Hay Literary Festival (with Dr Adam Rutherford). Hope to see you there!
A reminder that my US/Canadian tour is already underway.
Monday 22nd May: Discussion and Q&A chaired by Tim Harford at Blackwell’s Oxford, 18:15 -19:45
Tuesday 23rd May: Book signing at Forbidde...
April 25, 2017
Talking Walkaway on the Author Stories podcast
My novel Walkaway came out today and I sat down yesterday with the Author Stories Podcast to talk about writing, publishing, and, of course, the novel.
Come to the Chicago Walkaway event with Max Temkin, get a multitool!
My publicist just found an extra box of the cool promotional Walkaway multitools, and she’s generously offered to give them to the next 100 people to reserve tickets to the May 7th Walkaway event at Chicago’s Royal George Theater, where I’m presenting with CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY creator Max Temkin (current ticket-holders, don’t worry, you get one too).
A Crooked Timber seminar on Walkaway
My latest novel, Walkaway, was published today, and the Crooked Timber block has honored me with a seminar on the book, where luminaries from Henry Farrell to Julia Powles to John Holbo to Astra Taylor to Bruce Schneier weigh in with a series of critical essays that will run in the weeks to come, closing with an essay of my own, in response.
The seminar kicks off with a great essay by Henry Farrell: No Exit.
One of the people who blurbed Walkaway enthusiastically is William Gibson, who...
April 23, 2017
A hyperlinked bibliography for Homeland
Jonathan Voß did me the kindness of adding hyperlinks to the afterword/bibliography for my 2013 novel Homeland. Thank you Jonathan!
When I was a kid, facts were hard to come by. If you wanted to know how to hack a pay phone, you’d have to find someone else who knew how to do it, and get them to teach you. Or you’d have to find operating manuals for pay phones and pore over them until you came up with your own method. There’s nothing wrong with either of these solutions, except that they’re...
The Haunted Mansion Ghost Post wins a Themed Entertainment Award!
When I wrote about the Haunted Mansion loot crates (“Ghost Post”) last March, what I couldn’t say was that I was the writer on the project, penning the radio scripts, newspapers, letters, and associated gubbins and scraps that went along with the three boxes of custom-made props and merch, tying them together into a series of puzzles that the boxes’ 999 owners solved together over the internet.
That’s because the work — like all the contracting I do for Imagineering — was covered by a lege...
April 21, 2017
Walkaway Q&A: great debut novels, collections, and favorites
With less than a week to go until the debut of Walkaway, my next novel for adults, Portland’s Powell’s Bookstore has run a long Q&A with me about the book, my writing habits, my favorite reads, and many other subjects.
I’ll be at Powell’s on May 14 with Andy “Waxy” Baio as interlocutor — it’s one of 20+ cities I’m visiting on the US/Canada tour (the UK tour schedule is coming shortly!).
Besides your personal library, do you have any beloved collections?
A shocking number of them. I c...
April 17, 2017
Read: Chapter 3 of Walkaway, in which a university rises from the ashes
There’s only 8 days until the publication of Walkaway (stil time to pre-order signed hardcovers: US, UK), and Tor.com has just published a sneak peek at chapter 3: “Takeoff.”
I’m getting ready to hit the road and tour with the book: 20+ cities in the US and Canada are announced, with more to come in the UK!
Chapter 3 starts with a visit to the bombed out remains of Walkaway U, a guerrilla scientific research facility that’s been taken out by Hellfire missiles.
The ashes of Walkaway U we...
