Cory Doctorow can do no wrong.

Or at least he can write no wrong. (saying that outloud it sounds like he can't fix anything? that's not what I meant. I meant the opposite of that, in fact)

I just finished his latest novel, Makers. Similar to Doctorow's Little Brother, I couldn't put it down, the characterization was excellent, there were moments of purposefull over the topness (just to make sure we're getting the point), i was inspired to take some computer classes, I was inspired to dream and make sure those dreams come true, and I cried at the end. The two books may have all those things in common, but they are completely different.

If Little Brother was a manifesto on freedom, and the government's active war against, then Makers is a manifesto on business, and how what we think of as "business" doesn't work.

I'm not going to get into plot and characters because you can find all that on Amazon. so go do that. then go get this book. you will like it.

Getting a message/belief/philosophy out through a passionate, exciting, romantic, crazy, enlightening, impossible to put down novel? who the hell does Doctorow think he is, Ayn Rand?

random bits, and Google Maps

my review of Michael Marshall Smith's The Servants has been published here. Great book for pre-teen readers. my biggest complaint is that the book is so short! kids who are at the reading level for this have probably just finished the first or second Harry Potter book, i worry they would be bored with a book that just over 200 pages. so my message to Mr. Marshall Smith? you're not half bad, now give me another hundred pages!

Another short but incredibly satisfying and smart read is Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which is available via creative commons, here. I've been reading Mr. Doctorow for a few years now, and I religiously follow his stuff on Boing Boing.net (and if you go that site, today, right now, the top article is about guess what? Little Brother!!). More on Little Brother in a bit, but Since Cory Doctorow is now my favorite person of the day (go Canada!), i found myself studying his "suggested reading list" down at the very bottom of the Little Brother page. this is how I found myself reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I might suck at math, but i really enjoy reading about it. In the first hundred pages of Cryptonomicon, the story takes you to Pearl Harbor, Shanghai, various neighborhoods in Manila, Corregidor, Cavite, Gaudalcanal (where's the canal?), and other famous WWII pacific theatre locations. The only thing worse than my history is my geography, and I'm embarrassed to say I couldn't find most of these places on a map, or tell you why they are important (even more embarrassing is how many americans suffer from the same problem, and don't realize it's a problem).

i might not know where Manila is, but Google Maps does. with the high rez photography, i can even pick out the shipping containers, cranes, churches, plazas, and slums. Google maps gives me a whole new way to follow characters and stories. I'm sure Google Earth would even give me a orthogonal view of the exact hotel mentioned in the book.

Maybe tonight i'll map out all the places mentioned in Little Brother, in and around San Fransisco. See? the internet isn't all crap!

Cthulthu + cyberpunk. minus the punk. minus the cyber.

I’ve got no food to talk about today. If you want food tonight, go to food network, because I’m already over it. Sure, I could pour through my cookbooks to find something, but I’d rather just talk about some cool stuff I’ve been reading. Cuz it’s cooler than food.

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s collection of short stories Overclocked. It’s sort of cyberpunk, except without the punk. And without the cyber. Ever started reading a William Gibson or a Charlie Stross and wondered “wtf”? start with Doctorow. He’s the steps in between, the almost future, the tomorrow you can see on a horizon a few clicks before the cyberpunk. This volume has 5 short stories, most of which are prophetic and funny, and a little scary. Doctorow claims to know the future by knowing the present, and he’s right. We’re only a few steps away from his predictions of sentient computers who commit suicide, and already there with people in 3rd world countries being paid to play WoW and sell the winnings on E-bay. When you think about it, his predictions make perfect sense, because we have all the tools to make them a reality. When you think about it some more, you realize they make perfect sense because we’ve already been there before. Maybe not the same people, or the same countries, or the same technologies, but the same wars and the same bigotry. and his I Row-Boat story is just hilarious. I want the website for the Asimov Yeshiva!



it’s very sad how lacking I am in my scifi foundations. Embarrassing, in fact. You can’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you’ve been.
Next in the reading pile is Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, a tomb of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft (duh), and other authors who took over his legacy after his death in the 1930s, such as Clark Aston Smith, Frank Long, Robert Bloch, and August Derleth. I’m only two stories into the tomb, and I’ve already scared the crap out of myself. Most of these short stories were written between 1920 and 1940, with a few written in the last 20 years (such as that one by Stephen King). Yes, the writing style is more formal than I am used to, but I’ll get over it. it’s very sad how lacking I am in my scifi foundations. Embarrassing, in fact. You can’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you’ve been. Maybe one day I’ll have enough of a foundation of what the hell is going on to really understand what I’m reading.

I’m now signed up to be a reviewer with SFRevu, and I got my first book from them, called Splinter, by Adam Roberts. Not much on the back cover, but I’m immediately thinking Nickelodeon’s “Skyland”. SFRevu’s reviewing guidelines are on the vanilla side, but what can I say? I’m a whore for free ARCs.

What, this bookgasm isn’t enough food for thought?

Random thought for the day: the theme song to Kappa Mikey and Avril Lavigne’s new song “Girlfriend” are exactly the same. I’ve been watching Kappa Mikey just so I can sing the Avril lyrics, and everytime I hear that stupid bubblegum song on the radio, I sing the Kappa Mikey song.

I wonder what my life would be like if I watched a tv channel other than Nickelodeon?