- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Tor Books; 1 edition (Mar 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0765307596
- ISBN-13: 978-0765307590
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,649,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Praise for EASTERN STANDARD TRIBE:
‘Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar – a hard combination to beat (or, these days, to find).’ William Gibson
‘Artful and confident… Like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Doctorow has discovered that the present world is science fiction, if you look at it from the right angle’ Vancouver Sun
‘A witty, sometimes acerbic poke in the eye at modern culture’ Locus
Praise for Cory Doctorow:
‘Fresh and full of thought-provoking ideas, a book about tomorrow that demands to be read now.’ The Times
‘I’d recommend ‘Little Brother’ over pretty much any book I’ve read this year. Because I think it’ll change lives. It’s a wonderful, important book’ Neil Gaiman
‘A glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read’ Gene Wolfe
‘A cracking read’ Guardian
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.Product Description
Now published for the first time in the UK, the second visionary novel from the acclaimed author of LITTLE BROTHER.
Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He’s doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth into the world.
Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications mega-corp, but Art’s real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.
Instant wireless communication puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn’t changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations. Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted – not happiness, not money, certainly not love.
Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain…
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Cory Doctorow is a celebrated inhabitant of the blogosphere and an authority on intellectual copyright. This is his second novel.
The book's protagonist is a member of an elective community: the Eastern Standard Tribe. Several such communities exist in Doctorow's near future, each cohering around a timezone which dictates a life-schedule to its geographically dispersed members. Each group pursues an agenda, and so each of its members tends to live parallel lives: a straight life as, say, a management consultant, and a covert life as a member of his Tribe. This leads to complications familiar from spy thrillers and the world of industrial espionage. One such complication, centring around the protagonist's ideas for a novel file-sharing technology, generates the plot of the novel.
This makes the book sound quite weighty, and I don't doubt Doctorow's serious interest in the underlying issues. But Eastern Standard Tribe is a short (242 pages, not 432) rapid, almost weightless read - perhaps a good choice for a plane or train journey. I found the plot unlikely and the characterisation thin, but the author's enthusiasm generates sufficient forward momentum.
Doctorow's ideas seem to me to suffer from the typical faults of techie authors: in particular, a groundless optimism concerning the power of technology to improve our lives and solve the major problems we now face. The idea of elective communities based on shared attitudes, interests and styles is a seductive one, but Doctorow doesn't seem to notice that such communities already exist: they're called corporate multinationals and non-state actors, and their influence has been anything but unreservedly benign. He also seems not to notice the parallels between his online communities and nepotistic, undemocratic mutual aid organisations such as the freemasons.
As a result, the novel suffers from a lack of balance. Because there are no real threats - the protagonist's incarceration in a mental hospital notwithstanding - there isn't a sense of much being at stake, so it's hard to care deeply whether our hero succeeds or fails. Although I like speculative fiction, this is the first Doctorow I've read: painless enough, but I can't say it fills me with enthusiasm to read more.
The book's protagonist is a member of an elective community: the Eastern Standard Tribe. Several such communities exist in Doctorow's near future, each cohering around a timezone which dictates a life-schedule to its geographically dispersed members. Each group pursues an agenda, and so each of its members tends to live parallel lives: a straight life as, say, a management consultant, and a covert life as a member of his Tribe. This leads to complications familiar from spy thrillers and the world of industrial espionage. One such complication, centring around the protagonist's ideas for a novel file-sharing technology, generates the plot of the novel.
This makes the book sound quite weighty, and I don't doubt Doctorow's serious interest in the underlying issues. But Eastern Standard Tribe is a short (242 pages, not 432) rapid, almost weightless read - perhaps a good choice for a plane or train journey. I found the plot unlikely and the characterisation thin, but the author's enthusiasm generates sufficient forward momentum.
Doctorow's ideas seem to me to suffer from the typical faults of techie authors: in particular, a groundless optimism concerning the power of technology to improve our lives and solve the major problems we now face. The idea of elective communities based on shared attitudes, interests and styles is a seductive one, but Doctorow doesn't seem to notice that such communities already exist: they're called corporate multinationals and non-state actors, and their influence has been anything but unreservedly benign. He also seems not to notice the parallels between his online communities and nepotistic, undemocratic mutual aid organisations such as the freemasons.
As a result, the novel suffers from a lack of balance. Because there are no real threats - the protagonist's incarceration in a mental hospital notwithstanding - there isn't a sense of much being at stake, so it's hard to care deeply whether our hero succeeds or fails. Although I like speculative fiction, this is the first Doctorow I've read: painless enough, but I can't say it fills me with enthusiasm to read more.
Format:Paperback
Doctrow delivers with this little thought provoking book, I read it in a single sitting as it was a real page turner.
Doctrow keeps the novel length story concise at 242 pages by flitting between different events in time which keeps the book interesting throughout as the story slowly manifests itself and the details in the past and future line up.
Not a life changer or a classic but a damn fine read...
Doctrow keeps the novel length story concise at 242 pages by flitting between different events in time which keeps the book interesting throughout as the story slowly manifests itself and the details in the past and future line up.
Not a life changer or a classic but a damn fine read...
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
it is almost uncanny how doctorow is able to create a fictional world which is fictional but at the same time so familiar, so only few seconds away from the present....
the cops in london, one can imagine that soon things will be so bad for the victim of crimes, not for the criminals..
the book is also about other stories, the acknowledgements at the end of the book seem to point to autobiographical elements, maybe Cory has come across the same type of situations as his character Ant.
I am trying to avoid spoilers so I am not venturing into the story at all. Suffice to say this too is a well written book, with a lot at heart: from copyrights to love and its betrayal to a slightly new type of geek, not the coding but someone who designs interfaces and ways to improve people lives by using technology.
A must read.
the cops in london, one can imagine that soon things will be so bad for the victim of crimes, not for the criminals..
the book is also about other stories, the acknowledgements at the end of the book seem to point to autobiographical elements, maybe Cory has come across the same type of situations as his character Ant.
I am trying to avoid spoilers so I am not venturing into the story at all. Suffice to say this too is a well written book, with a lot at heart: from copyrights to love and its betrayal to a slightly new type of geek, not the coding but someone who designs interfaces and ways to improve people lives by using technology.
A must read.
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