Cory Doctorow
A Place So Foreign
and Eight More

Introduction by Bruce Sterling

"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 The Fifth Element

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" — 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.

NOTE: Six of these stories will be available for download at www.craphound.com.

Cory Doctorow (www.craphound.com) 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.