*Transcendental *Logic

I kid you not:  I have spent the last 24 hours trying to figure out how I could write a post that would recommend the following book enough.

In the end, I probably can’t.  But I’ll give it a go, because to say nothing would be a capital crime of bookwormdom.

Look, I did something yesterday that I haven’t done, seriously, in about ten years — not since I started my first run in college, I think.  Because college makes you busy, and while you still read "fun" books, it’s no longer with the same all-consuming verve that they get read when you’re younger.  …Unless one comes along that grabs you by the hair, shoves your face into it and doesn’t let go until you’re satisfied in a way you forgot you needed to be.  (Yes, I meant that to sound like sex.  It damn near was like sex.)

Yesterday I read.  For about seven straight hours, minus bathroom and coffee breaks.  Yesterday I finished an entire book in ONE SITTING.  Thankfully this didn’t take me any longer, because I was fully prepared to blow off taiji and stay at work as late as I had to to finish it.  (Also, thankfully it was a slow day at work, because besides answering a few phone calls, I got nothing done.  Don’t tell my boss. ;)  About 5/6 of the way through, I started mumbling feverishly to myself and checking the clock, making plans for who I would lie to and how, or if I would just turn my phone off and lock my door, because I sure as hell wasn’t leaving until I finished.

The book is Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother.  That link will take you to a free downloadable version; all hail Creative Commons.  (HAIL! HAIL! HAIL!)

I’m…I’m not sure if this was just the best book I’ve read since Xmas 2007 (when I got hold of Bridge of Birds), or if it actually changed my life.  Certainly I spent the whole rest of yesterday in a cloud.  Certainly I feel branded by some of the truths this fun little novel contains.  Certainly I’ve gone from being "a fan" of Cory Doctorow’s writing to a rabid fan, and certainly I’m trying to figure out the best way to get copies of this book into the hands of everyone I know. 

This is the most important book since 1984.  In fact, it IS 1984, written for our own age.  But don’t let that turn you off:  It’s also substantially more fun than the aforementioned classic (though I think the original is quite fun; but I know that my love of dismal, gritty stories isn’t shared by everyone). 

There are two things about Cory Doctorow, specifically, that just make this book.  One is his grand knowledge of modern technology, not just in electronics terms, but also in social terms.  The tech in this book is dead real; nothing that’s mentioned can’t either already be done on a wide scale, or already be done on a small scale, and is just waiting for its moment.  Some of the names are changed, but not very many, and there’s a solid bibliography where you can learn about anything you don’t know already.  As a technophile myself, I knew about most of it, but to see it all so well-understood, put together and presented in a real, vibrant, fictional world was breathtaking, to say the least.

But Sir Doctorow (who needs to get knighted asap; hell, give the man a duchy) is more than a knowledgable geek who writes stories.  He’s also a fantastic writer, one of the purer examples of why I love (good) science fiction writing.  His technique is absolutely transparent to the reader, meaning his stories race along like the good old breathless mindless fiction of our youths — like good comic books, like good adventure stories.  No pedantry.  No purple prose or long explications.  Fun.  You’re too busy, in Little Brother, loving the characters and gripping your chair and grinning and wincing and all that, to really realize what a gem of modern culture you’re holding, and how absolutely vital a piece of educational material this is for anyone living in the digitized Western world today.  

Now, I just have to figure out how to get this in everyone’s hands, yesterday.  It’s CC, so I could make copies and give them away…or I could just spam everyone with the URL and harrass them until they read it…Hmm.

Anyway, that’s what I did yesterday:  I read, no, devoured, a book whole.  And it devoured me.  Like 1984, reading this book changed things in my head.  Though none of the tech was really new to me, seeing it portrayed this way–understanding it this way–shoved some tectonic thinking hard into place, and opened up a portal to my youth that I’d thought was lost.  Part of me feels, all kidding aside, like it was saved.  Saved from complacency, obscurity, and fading into the background of a comfortable pseudo-American life. 

Wow.

GO READ THE BOOK!!!

This entry was posted 6 months, 4 weeks ago on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 8:53 am and is filed under aesthetica, consumer warfare, cool thing, fair use / IP, gaveldrop, logos addict, oilpocalypse, technical-ity, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.