--
=======
Blurbs:
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"Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar -- a hard combination to beat
(or, these days, to find)."
- William Gibson,
Author of Neuromancer
--
"Cory Doctorow knocks me out. In a good way."
- Pat Cadigan,
Author of Synners
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"Cory Doctorow is just far enough ahead of the game to give you that authentic
chill of the future, and close enough to home for us to know that he's talking
about where we live as well as where we're going to live; a connected world
full of disconnected people. One of whom is about to lobotomise himself through
the nostril with a pencil. Funny as hell and sharp as steel."
- Warren Ellis,
Author of Transmetropolitan
--
=======================
A note about this book:
=======================
Last year, in January 2003, my first novel [ http://craphound.com/down ] came
out. I was 31 years old, and I'd been calling myself a novelist since the age of
12. It was the storied dream-of-a-lifetime, come-true-at-last. I was and am
proud as hell of that book, even though it is just one book among many released
last year, better than some, poorer than others; and even though the print-run
(which sold out very quickly!) though generous by science fiction standards,
hardly qualifies it as a work of mass entertainment.
The thing that's extraordinary about that first novel is that it was released
under terms governed by a Creative Commons [ http://creativecommons.org ]
license that allowed my readers to copy the book freely and distribute it far
and wide. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the book were made and distributed
this way. *Hundreds* of *thousands*.
Today, I release my second novel, and my third [
http://www.argosymag.com/NextIssue.html ], a collaboration with Charlie Stross
is due any day, and two [
http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/show.html?fn.preview_doctorow ] more [
http://www.craphound.com/usrbingodexcerpt.txt ] are under contract. My career as
a novelist is now well underway -- in other words, I am firmly afoot on a long
road that stretches into the future: my future, science fiction's future,
publishing's future and the future of the world.
The future is my business, more or less. I'm a science fiction writer. One way
to know the future is to look good and hard at the present. Here's a thing I've
noticed about the present: MORE PEOPLE ARE READING MORE WORDS OFF OF MORE
SCREENS THAN EVER BEFORE. Here's another thing I've noticed about the present:
FEWER PEOPLE ARE READING FEWER WORDS OFF OF FEWER PAGES THAN EVER BEFORE. That
doesn't mean that the book is *dying* -- no more than the advent of the printing
press and the de-emphasis of Bible-copying monks meant that the book was dying
-- but it does mean that the book is changing. I think that *literature* is
alive and well: we're reading our brains out! I just think that the complex
social practice of "book" -- of which a bunch of paper pages between two covers
is the mere expression -- is transforming and will transform further.
I intend on figuring out what it's transforming into. I intend on figuring out
the way that some writers -- that *this writer*, right here, wearing my
underwear -- is going to get rich and famous from his craft. I intend on
figuring out how *this writer's* words can become part of the social discourse,
can be relevant in the way that literature at its best can be.
I don't know what the future of book looks like. To figure it out, I'm doing
some pretty basic science. I'm peering into this opaque, inscrutable system of
publishing as it sits in the year 2004, and I'm making a perturbation. I'm
stirring the pot to see what surfaces, so that I can see if the system reveals
itself to me any more thoroughly as it roils. Once that happens, maybe I'll be
able to formulate an hypothesis and try an experiment or two and maybe -- just
maybe -- I'll get to the bottom of book-in-2004 and beat the competition to
making it work, and maybe I'll go home with all (or most) of the marbles.
It's a long shot, but I'm a pretty sharp guy, and I know as much about this
stuff as anyone out there. More to the point, trying stuff and doing research
yields a non-zero chance of success. The alternatives -- sitting pat, or worse,
getting into a moral panic about "piracy" and accusing the readers who are
blazing new trail of "the moral equivalent of shoplifting" -- have a *zero*
percent chance of success.
Most artists never "succeed" in the sense of attaining fame and modest fortune.
A career in the arts is a risky long-shot kind of business. I'm doing what I can
to sweeten my odds.
So here we are, and here is novel number two, a book called Eastern Standard
Tribe, which you can walk into shops all over the world and buy [
http://craphound.com/est/buy.php ] as a physical artifact -- a very nice
physical artifact, designed by Chesley-award-winning art director Irene Gallo
and her designer Shelley Eshkar, published by Tor Books, a huge, profit-making
arm of an enormous, multinational publishing concern. Tor is watching what
happens to this book nearly as keenly as I am, because we're all very interested
in what the book is turning into.
To that end, here is the book as a non-physical artifact. A file. A bunch of
text, slithery bits that can cross the world in an instant, using the Internet,
a tool designed to copy things very quickly from one place to another; and using
personal computers, tools designed to slice, dice and rearrange collections of
bits. These tools demand that their users copy and slice and dice -- rip, mix
and burn! -- and that's what I'm hoping you will do with this.
Not (just) because I'm a swell guy, a big-hearted slob. Not because Tor is run
by addlepated dot-com refugees who have been sold some snake-oil about the
e-book revolution. Because you -- the readers, the slicers, dicers and copiers
-- hold in your collective action the secret of the future of publishing.
Writers are a dime a dozen. Everybody's got a novel in her or him. Readers are a
precious commodity. You've got all the money and all the attention and you run
the word-of-mouth network that marks the difference between a little book, soon
forgotten, and a book that becomes a lasting piece of posterity for its author,
changing the world in some meaningful way.
I'm unashamedly exploiting your imagination. Imagine me a new practice of book,
readers. Take this novel and pass it from inbox to inbox, through your IM
clients, over P2P networks. Put it on webservers. Convert it to weird, obscure
ebook formats. Show me -- and my colleagues, and my publisher -- what the future
of book looks like.
I'll keep on writing them if you keep on reading them. But as cool and wonderful
as writing is, it's not half so cool as inventing the future. Thanks for helping
me do it.
Here's a summary of the license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0
Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,
display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give the
original author credit.
No Derivative Works. The licensor permits others to copy,
distribute, display and perform only unaltered copies of the work
-- not derivative works based on it.
Noncommercial. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,
display, and perform the work. In return, licensees may not use
the work for commercial purposes -- unless they get the
licensor's permission.
And here's the license itself:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0-legalcode
THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS
CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORK
IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF
THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE IS
PROHIBITED.
BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPT
AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THE LICENSOR
GRANTS YOU THE RIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOUR
ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS.