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More copies of this ISBN:Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Townby Cory Doctorow
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Alan is a middle-aged entrepreneur in contemporary Toronto who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in the bohemian neighborhood of Kensington. This naturally brings him in contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman, who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings — wings, moreover, that grow back after each attempt to cut them off.
Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, and among his brothers is a set of Russian nesting dolls. Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick, are on his doorstepwell on their way to starvation because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, whom Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned....bent on revenge. Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who build miracles of hardware scavenged from the city's Dumpsters. But Alan's past won't leave him alone — and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and all his friends. Review:"It's only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow's fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he's the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately to behave like a human being — or at least like his idealized version of one. He joins a cyber-anarchist's plot to spread a free wireless Internet through Toronto at the same time he agrees to protect his youngest brothers (members of a set of Russian nesting dolls) from their dead brother who's now resurrected and bent on revenge. Life gets even more chaotic after he becomes the lover and protector of the girl next door, whom he tries to restrain from periodically cutting off her wings. Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe) treats these and other bizarre images and themes with deadpan wit. In this inventive parable about tolerance and acceptance, he demonstrates how memorably the outrageous and the everyday can coexist. Agent, Russell Galen. (May 5) FYI: Doctorow won the 2000 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"The combination of Alan facing up to his family and their strangeness, the damage his dead brother will do to everything Alan cares about, and Doctorow's inescapable technological enthusiasm eventuates in a lovely, satisfying tale." Booklist Review:"Fine modern fantasy...with the potential to please both SF and mainstream readers....Smart, clever, delightful stuff; it falls short of perfect...but it's still likely to be one of the better non-magic-and-dragon fantasies this year." Kirkus Reviews Review:"Cory Doctorow adroitly interconnects these peculiar plots...and successfully experiments with a risky prose style. But if there is an allegory buried in this mountain, it got lost in the washing machine. (Grade: B-)" Entertainment Weekly Review:"Doctorow breaks new ground....Magical realism and literary iconoclasm abound in a novel that should appeal to fans of experimental fiction in a near-future setting." Library Journal Review:"Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you've ever read." Gene Wolfe Review:"[B]lends ordinary technology, nerdista tech, myth, horror, sheer astonishing silliness, and the Aspergerish quest of the outsider into a demented non-stop juggling act..." Damien Broderick, Locus Review:"Dazzles....What probably carries the whole project is Doctorow's deft, deep depiction of his characters. I have to say that he's never done a better job of limning real people....This essential believability pulls us in, easing our acceptance of any grotesqueries." Paul Di Filippo, SciFi.com Review:"Magical realism and literary iconoclasm abound in a novel that should appeal to fans of experimental fiction in a near-future setting." Library Journal Review:"The one that puts [Doctorow] over the top as one of the rare, demonically original, challenging and gifted writers." Thomas M. Wagner, SFReviews Synopsis:One of the leading voices of next-generation SF and author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom returns with a miraculous novel of secrets, lies, magic, and Internet connectivity, set on the streets of modern-day Toronto. About the AuthorCanadian-born Cory Doctorow is the UK coordinator for Creative Commons and the European Affairs Coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, with nearly a million visitors a month; he also maintains a personal site at www.craphound.com. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards. His other books include two previous novels, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe, and a story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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