Overclocked
Stories of the Future Present
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“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-colored glasses. Enjoy.”—Neil Gaiman
New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow has been hailed as one of the freshest voices in science fiction, and this collection of intriguing novellas is yet another reason why.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live through a bioweapon attack or to have every aspect of your life governed by invisible ants? In Cory Doctorow’s collection of novellas, he wields his formidable experience in technology and computing to give us mind-bending sci-fi tales that explore the possibilities of information technology—and its various uses—run amok.
“Anda’s Game” is a spin on the bizarre new phenomenon of “cyber sweatshops,” in which people are paid very low wages to play online games all day in order to generate in-game wealth, which can be converted into actual money. Another tale tells of the heroic exploits of “sysadmins”—systems administrators—as they defend the cyberworld, and hence the world at large, from worms and bioweapons. And yes, there’s a story about zombies, too.
“He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow.” —Bruce Sterling, award-winning author of Schismatrix Plus and The Difference Engine
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An unabashed promulgator of the Internet and its democratic potential,\t\t Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe) explores\t\t the benefits and consequences of online systems in this provocative collection\t\t of six mostly long stories. "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" is a moving\t\t chronicle of a widely dispersed network of techno-geeks laboring to keep the\t\t World Wide Web running as an epitaph to an earth devastated by a bioweapon\t\t apocalypse. In "After the Siege" "the bleak chronicle of a modern siege of\t\t Stalingrad "the horrors of war become fodder for a documentary film crew's\t\t reality-based entertainment. Two tales riff on classic SF themes: "I, Robot,"\t\t in which Isaac Asimov's positronic bots are cogs in a dysfunctional future\t\t totalitarian state, and "Anda's Game," a brilliant homage to Orson Scott Card's\t\t Ender's saga, in which a role-playing enthusiast finds herself immersed in a\t\t surprisingly real world of class warfare fought online by avatars of game\t\t players. Most "meat"-minded readers will find much to savor.\t\t