Fantastic Metropolis

Ventus, Karl Schroeder

(Tor Books, 2000)

What I’d prefer to do here is blurb Karl’s new book, Permanence, which Tor will be publishing in 2002. When I workshopped Permanence with Karl, it pretzelled my mind into Escher shapes whose topology I still can’t understand. But Permanence isn’t out yet, so lemme tell you about Ventus, Karl’s first solo novel, the story of a sapient, object-oriented universe that marries cutting-edge computer science to epic, medieval adventure, plunging the lucky reader into a marvellously realized world of swashbuckling armies and million-year-old planets-cum-people-cum-gods who stalk one another through a world of pervasive and invisible technology. While mere mortals can’t read Permanence yet, Ventus is a fine stand-in until Tor gets Permanence on the shelves.

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser

(Houghton Mifflin, 2001)

Read this book and never eat another hamburger for as long as you live. The story of the rise and rise of fast food in America is as revolting as it is fascinating, a slow-motion nutritional car-wreck that will have you driving past, rather than driving through. Fast food is corrupt, unsanitary, inedible, and manufactured within an inch of its life.

Secrets and Lies, Bruce Schneier

(John Wiley and Sons, 2000)

The climax of so many science fiction thrillers revolves around a quasi-mystical bit of computer hackery where some bespectacled geek clatters away at a keyboard, mutters some pseudo-tech horseshit and hey–presto, the bad guys are defeated. It’s not just crap, it’s boring crap. And it doesn’t have to be! Schneier, a righteous SF fan and a one of the world’s leading infosec gods has, in Secrets and Lies, created a layperson’s security bible, a thrilling tour through the world of computer crime, high-tech incompetence, wily hackers and ethical techlogists. This book is a must-read for anyone who plans to use a computer, period.

Cruddy, by Linda Barry

(Scribner, 2000)

Linda Barry’s latest novel inserts itself into your guts like a rusty fishhook and then Barry hauls on the line hard enough to drag you through the story, past page after page of gruesome, depressing, horribly fascinating coming-of-age narrative. This isn’t genre horror, but that’s just a marketing decision. This is every bit as nightmarish as any of the darkest fantasy you’ll find in the horror section of your local bookseller.

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Cory Doctorow is the co-editor of Boing Boing. His first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, will be published by Tor Books in Fall 2002, and an excerpt is available The Infinite Matrix. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards. He is the co-founder of OpenCola, a software company.