Lunch with George

Friday, March 25, 2005

Cory Doctorow Interview on O'Reilly Network

Richard Koman interviews Cory Doctorow (one of Paul's new favorite authors) about his Science Fiction writing. Cory is a spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundatation, and recently presented a session called "All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites" at the Emerging Technologies Conference held recently in San Diego.

Read the interview.

Labels: doctorow

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Cory Doctorow: the Baroque Cycle is Worth It

Cory Doctorow just finished System of the World, Neal Stephenson's final book in the Baroque Cycle. In his post on Boing Boing, Cory makes the case for reading all three, saying it's a big, sometimes irritating investment, but it really pays off. He describes the Cycle thusly:

...these books are like a good curry. They're mild and interesting when you first taste them, but after you've swallowed, they grow on you, spreading a warm fire throughout your digestive system, making beads of sweat appear on your forehead. Since finishing the first two books, I've been practically haunted by them. Ever time I spend money, or walk through London, or see a ship, or think about math and science, some snippet of those books springs to mind, a lens through which to reexamine my thinking and assumptions.

I never made it past about page 50 of Quicksilver, but maybe the time has come to do my chores and get my reward.

Labels: doctorow, stephenson

Monday, November 15, 2004

New Short Story from Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow, one of my favorite new authors, has published a new short story in Salon, entitled Anda's Game (you need to subscribe to Salon to read the whole thing, or just read my PDF version below).

Here's an excerpt from Cory's posting to Boing Boing:

Salon has just published a brand-new short story of mine, called "Anda's Game," which is a riff on the way that property-rights are coming to games, and on the bizarre spectacle of sweat-shops in which children are paid to play the game all day in order to generate eBay-able game-wealth. When I was a kid, there were arcade kings who would play up Gauntlet characters to maximum health and weapons and then sell their games to nearby players for a dollar or two -- netting them about $0.02 an hour -- but this is a very different proposition indeed.

This is the first story ever published by Salon under a Creative Commons license-- which means it can be freely distributed if it is not modified and no one profits from the distribution.

Here's a PDF version of the story.

Labels: doctorow

Paul is reading...

It's been almost 20 years since Stephen R. Donaldson published book 3 of the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. White Gold Wielder was a disappointing ending to a disappointing second trilogy. Donaldson claimed he put off writing the final trilogy until he was a better writer. I can't wait to see if it is as good as the first!

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