Context

August 29, 2011
Doctorow (who writes a column for Publishers Weekly) has aroused controversies in the past by making free downloads of his books (Little Brother; Content) available at the same time they are sold in stores, and he has lectured and written widely on copyright issues. Now he delivers a collection of his past print and online essays from the Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Locus, and other publications. As tech publisher O’Reilly notes in the foreword, “Cory helps us make sense of the world that is unfolding.... He is passionate about the potential of technology to build a better world, and evangelical about our responsibility to make it so.” The 40-plus short essays chart myriad pathways into the future—including devilish devices, copyright confusions, sex in YA novels, the spam wars (antispam vs. spam), music downloading, techno-thrillers, the book publishing industry, and e-book readers. In “What I Do” he recommends hardware, software, phones, and e-mail programs. He loves the “hundred delights” of the Internet, but not when it’s a distraction: “Don’t research,” he tells writers, because it can become “an endless click-trance that will turn your 20 minutes of composing into a half-day’s idyll through the web.” He questions the power of Google: “It may seem as unlikely as a publicly edited encyclopedia, but the internet needs a publicly controlled search.” With straight-arrow succinctness, Doctorow makes the complicated accessible throughout this great little guidebook, a GPS for the digital age.

September 15, 2011

Canadian blogger, sf novelist, and copyright activist Doctorow writes about issues near and dear to librarians' hearts in this collection of essays on topics from the damage censorship does to schools to the complications of digital-rights management. Drawing from blog entries and columns he wrote for the Guardian and Publishers Weekly, the book presents 44 short pieces that could be sound bites. He's not afraid to use his experience in the worlds of programming and, more recently, publishing as kindling to fuel his arguments, and essays such as the pointed and irreverent "Why I Won't Buy an iPad (And Think You Shouldn't Either)" are highlights. The writing is full of practical advice for those grappling with writing and self-publishing or simply trying to keep their email inbox neat. Formal subject divisions would have made the book easier to navigate. VERDICT A good introduction to Doctorow, the volume collects his most recent work and will be of interest to a wide audience: anyone who teaches, reads sf, follows tech news, or wonders why one can't read the same books on a Kindle as on a Nook.--Kate Gray, New York

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