A Place So Foreign and Eight More

In Doctorow's world, characters check their email, use Zip-Loc bags, navigate by GPS, write code, start up e-zines, eat Krispy Kremes, and dream in IMAX format. They also travel back in time and think they're the reincarnation of Nicola Tesla — and who's to say they're not?

But the modern age and its progeny is not the only thing Doctorow has in mind. A Place So Foreign tells many tales, from the adventures of a 19th century Huck Finn in love with Jules Verne's fiction to a serious discussion of cognition via Descartes and Turing to the story of two friends — one human, one alien — both obsessed with American ephemera.

While Doctorow is serious when it comes to questions of individuality amidst burgeoning corporate culture — the effects of dejection and encroaching anxiety on a coder running the corporate rat-race in "0wnz0red" &3151; he is also funny, and in stories like "The Rebranding of Billy Bailey" his sense of humor vies with his incisively nerdy imagination for first place. From Toronto to Utah to Mogadishu to Radio Shack, A Place So Foreign goes deep into the bowels of life in the new century and comes back up wide-eyed and laughing.

"Postcyberpunk Doctorow, a rising Canadian SF star, follows his Orwellian Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003) with nine too-near-future tales of aliens and the human alienated — and it's often hard to tell the difference. In "Craphound," the author posits an Earth taken over by "bugouts," aliens obsessed with trading technological expertise for human junk, the ephemera that momentarily defines a society and then becomes silly or naive when some new and more soul-destroying technological amusement arrives. That Faustian central metaphor of the thirst for technology as the ultimate source of spiritual corruption almost guarantees Doctorow's other absorption, his vision of Disneyland in "Return to Pleasure Island," a horrifying sidewise glimpse of the children's entertainment industry. Since the short story form seems somewhat restrictive for him, his best pieces, like his achingly funny reflections on adolescence ("The Year of the Hormone") and a Jewish superman in the era of the Pax Aliena ("The Super Man and the Bugout"), need at least novella-size room. His closing story, "OwnzOred," a shockingly original glimpse of 21st-century mankind tottering at the brink of a mortally steep cliff, is a polemic on fair-use freedom. By relentlessly exposing disenchanted Silicon Valley dwellers caught in a military-industrial web of khaki money, Congress-critters and babykiller projects, Doctorow explores the intersection of social concern and technology-Never-Never land, or 2084?" Publishers Weekly

"Few writers boggle my sense of reality as much as Cory Doctorow. His vision is so far out there, you'll need your GPS to find your way back." David Marusek, Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, Nebula Award nominee

"Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you're going to find." Gardner Dozois Editor, Asimov's SF

"He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow!" Bruce Sterling Author of The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction

"Cory Doctorow strafes the senses with a geekspeedfreak explosion of gomi kings with heart, weirdass shapeshifters from Pleasure Island and jumping automotive jazz joints. If this is Canadian science fiction, give me more." Nalo Hopkinson, Author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring

"As scary as the future, and twice as funny. In this eclectic and electric collection Doctorow strikes sparks off today to illuminate tomorrow, which is what SF is supposed to do. And nobody does it better." Terry Bisson Author of Bears Discover Fire

"Really, you should need a prescription to ingest this book. Out of all the glittering crap life and our society hands us, craphound supreme Doctorow has managed to fashion some industrial-grade art." Paul Di Filippo Author of The Steampunk Trilogy

"Cory Doctorow straps on his miner's helmet and takes you deep into the caverns and underground rivers of Pop Culture, here filtered through SF-coloured glasses. Enjoy." Neil Gaiman, Author of American Gods and Sandman

A collection of nine short stories revolving around trash, popular culture, nerd pride, and the intersection of social change and technology, with an introduction by Bruce Sterling.

Cory Doctorow is the author of two novels, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe. He lives in San Francisco, where he works for the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.