Arts

Podcast – Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com

Cory Doctorow’s Literary Works

Latest Episodes:

**Podcast: The Man Who Sold the Moon, Part 03** Jan 30, 2018
Show notes

Here’s part three of my reading (MP3) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015’s Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It’s my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.

MP3

Interview with the National Science Teachers Association’s Lab Out Loud podcast Jan 08, 2018

Show notes

Back in 2010, I appeared as a guest on the National Science Teachers Association’s Lab Out Loud podcast, and this year, they had me back as part of their celebration of their first decade; they’ve just published the interview, (MP3) which was primarily about my novel Walkaway.

A Hopeful Look At The Apocalypse: An interview with PRI’s Innovation Hub Jan 05, 2018

Show notes

I chatted with Innovation Hub, distributed by PRI, about the role of science fiction and dystopia in helping to shape the future (MP3).

Three Takeaways

1. Doctorow thinks that science-fiction can give people “ideas for what to do if the future turns out in different ways.” Like how William Gibson’s Neuromancer didn’t just predict the internet, it predicted the intermingling of corporations and the state.

2. When you have story after story about how people turn on each other after disaster, Doctorow believes it gives us the largely false impression that people act like jerks in crises. When in fact, people usually rise to the occasion.

3. With Walkaway, his “optimistic” disaster novel, Doctorow wanted to present a new narrative about resolving differences between people who are mostly on the same side.

**Podcast: The Man Who Sold the Moon, Part 01** Jan 02, 2018
Show notes

Here’s part one of my reading (MP3) of The Man Who Sold the Moon, my award-winning novella first published in 2015’s Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. It’s my Burning Man/maker/first days of a better nation story and was a kind of practice run for my 2017 novel Walkaway.

MP3

Talking Walkaway on the Barnes and Noble podcast Dec 16, 2017

Show notes

I recorded this interview last summer at San Diego Comic-Con; glad to hear it finally live!

Authors are, without exception, readers, and behind every book there is…another book, and another. In this episode of the podcast, we’re joined by two writers for conversations about the vital books and ideas that influence inform their own work. First, Cory Doctorow talks with B&N’s Josh Perilo about his recent novel of an imagined near future, Walkaway, and the difference between a dystopia and a disaster. Then we hear from Will Schwalbe, talking with Miwa Messer about the lifetime of reading behind his book Books for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life.

Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza—known to his friends as Hubert, Etc—was too old to be at that Communist party.

But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be—except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society—and walk away.

After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter—from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.

It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war – a war that will turn the world upside down.

Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years…and the very human people who will live their consequences.

A Hopeful Look At The Apocalypse: interview with Innovation Hub Jul 29, 2017

Show notes

I’m on the latest episode of Innovation Hub (MP3):

Science-fiction is a genre that imagines the future. It doesn’t necessarily predict the future (after all, where are flying cars?), but it grapples with the technological and societal changes happening today to better understand our world and where it’s heading.

So, what does it mean when so much of our most popular science-fiction – The Handmaid’s Tale, The Walking Dead, and The Hunger Games – present bleak, depressing futures? Cory Doctorow might just have an answer. He’s a blogger, writer, activist, and author of the new book Walkaway, an optimistic disaster novel.

Three Takeaways

* Doctorow thinks that science-fiction can give people “ideas for what to do if the future turns out in different ways.” Like how William Gibson’s Neuromancer didn’t just predict the internet, it predicted the intermingling of corporations and the state.

* When you have story after story about how people turn on each other after disaster, Doctorow believes it gives us the largely false impression that people act like jerks in crises. When in fact, people usually rise to the occasion.

* With Walkaway, his “optimistic” disaster novel, Doctorow wanted to present a new narrative about resolving differences between people who are mostly on the same side.

Interview with Wired UK’s Upvote podcast Jul 05, 2017

Show notes

Back in May, I stopped by Wired UK while on my British tour for my novel Walkaway to talk about the novel, surveillance, elections, and, of course, DRM. (MP3)