My guest this episode is Cory Doctorow, recorded not — as most of these conversations are — while on my convention travels, but when he was in Washington, D.C. to receive an award from the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, a brief pause while on his book tour promoting Chokepoint Capitalism, which he wrote with Rebecca Giblin.

We met for lunch at the Laotian restaurant Laos in Town, just a few blocks away from Union Station, partly because Cory had to leap a train immediately after for Baltimore that night, and so needed to be close by, but also because of Tom Sietsema’s rave in the Washington Post.

Cory is a science fiction writer, journalist and technology activist who in 2020, was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In the years since I published his first professional fiction sale in Science Fiction Age magazine (though I didn’t buy his first professionally sold short story, a distinction we get into during our chat), he’s won the Locus, Prometheus, Copper Cylinder, White Pine and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards.

His novels include Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), Eastern Standard Tribe (2004), Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (2005), Little Brother (2008), his most recent, Walkaway (2017), and others. His most recent short story collection is Radicalized (2019). He’s also a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties.

We discussed how different D.C. seems to him now that he’s a U.S. citizen, the way his remarkable evening hanging with both David Byrne and Spider Robinson put things in perspective, the lessons we learned (both good and bad) from Harlan Ellison, our differing levels of hope and despair at the current state of the world, the major effect Judith Merril had on the direction of his life, how an ongoing column he wrote for Science Fiction Age magazine predicted the next 20 years of his life, our differing opinions as to what it means when we say stories are didactic, how to continue on in the face of rejection — and then once we do, how not to become parodies of ourselves, the best piece of advice he didn’t follow, our differing views on spoilers, what he recently came to understand about the reactionary message of traditional hardboiled fiction — and how he used that in his upcoming trilogy, knowing when to break the rules of writing, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us — (more…)

I was supposed to attend Boskone last year, but ended up bailing because I didn’t feel ready yet to attend anything but a local convention in this changed world. But I’ve become more comfortable with conventions, though, having made it through Balticon, the Chicago Worldcon, Capclave, and a few other cons without succumbing to COVID-19, so that means four weeks from today, I’ll be up in Boston, not only appearing on programing, but also recording several episodes of my Eating the Fantastic podcast.

If you’ll be attending Boskone as well, and would like to hear me pontificate, here’s where you’ll be able to find me —

Friday, February 17

Building Fandom and Community
5:30 p.m., Marina 2
Fandom is a glorious and multifaceted thing that spans generations and genres. It’s become more than a little fragmented over the years, but we are all still part of a larger whole. What have we lost with the fragmenting of fandom? How can its niche groups engage with the wider fan community while still honoring and protecting what makes them unique? This will be an inclusive session aimed at bringing people together.
with Janice Gelb, Steve Miller, Jen Wilson-Hughes, and Lisa Hertel

Starting and Running a Successful Podcast
8:30 p.m., Marina 2
Podcasting gives us an outlet to share our thoughts and ideas with the world, and everyone seems to have something (perhaps a lot) to say. But is podcasting right for everyone? How do you go about “bootstrapping” a podcast? What do you need and what do you need to know? How do you attract and keep an audience? Where do you find a place to host your site? Successful ‘casters pass on their secrets.
with Curtis M. Lawson, Jen Wilson-Hughes, Brianna Wu, and Gregory A. Wilson

Saturday, February 18

Writing Dystopian Events as You Live Them
2:30 p.m., Marina 2
It should come as no surprise that our world is far from perfect. There are totalitarian regimes where human rights are subservient to the state. And all societies on Earth have those trapped in dystopian situations. Let’s learn why it is important for the voices of those people to be heard. And how do you write about dystopian events while you’re living through them.
with F. Brett Cox, Christie Meierz, Yvette Lisa, and Charles Stross

Reading
3:30 p.m., Griffin
Prepare a reading of no more than 10 minutes in length
with Colin Alexander

I hope to see you there!