Cory Doctorow – Xaviar X. Xerexes

Yes, Thank You Cory Doctorow

by Xaviar XerexesJune 25, 2013

Killing time, surfing Feedly feeds and saw this post from Willy-Bob Wheaton recalling a story about the time he sent his first draft of his a book he was working on Cory Doctorow to read and Cory gave him the honest truth: there’s a good tale in there but the writing ain’t so great. Eventually Wheaton overcomes self-doubt generated by said tough love, and does the tough work of rewriting and rewriting until he gets his first book published. Nice illustration of the first law of Ira Glass. Anyhow Wheaton linked to a site called I Write Like which purports to analyze …

Everything Is Internet Policy

by Xaviar XerexesMay 12, 2013

Another great talk from Cory Doctorow on the nature of the Internet and its relationship to society. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWqx_1tDyqE?rel=0] You might also be interested in this recent interview between Tim Wu and Cory Doctorow hosted at Slate: [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/90987701″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Bookmark: Cory Doctorow

by Xaviar XerexesFebruary 16, 2013

I met Cory Doctorow once at a conference called Supernova in Washington DC back in the very early part of the ‘naughts. It was actually about technology policy which is the fascinating thing about Cory Doctorow, talented and successful writer; he’s also quite an effective public advocate for a number of progressive 21st Century causes, including privacy and copyright reform. He’s had an impressive public life. It’s the books though where he has been able to wrap his ideas around and through interesting narrative; probably still the best way to get through to majority of the world. I’ve read everything …

Fiction Reading This Summer

by Xaviar XerexesSeptember 15, 2009March 8, 2020

I read a bunch of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels this summer, not really in order though. It’s just a wonderful series, funny, but a coherent enough fantasy world that you care about the stories and the characters. I wish I’d had these to read when I was a kid. I’ve also been reading John Scalzi’s novels lately. He’s a fairly “lite-science” science fiction writer and pretty efficient at telling a tale (things happen! characters move!). They’re good reads and the 3 part “Old Man’s War” series is good fun. I’m in the middle of reading Zoe’s Tale, which is a re-telling (so far) of parts of the …