Boing Boing: New story on Cory's podcast: Truncat, a sequel to Down and Out

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

New story on Cory's podcast: Truncat, a sequel to Down and Out

After a long hiatus, I've started up my podcast again with my story Truncat, an indirect sequel to my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Truncat is a parable about warez groups and Napster, about generation war and the trouble with power-laws. In Truncat, the reputation-based Bitchun Society is stagnating, and the birth rate has dropped off so far that only a million kids are alive on the whole planet. These kids have hacked the consciousness-backup system and illicitly copy and load the backups of their elders, treating these backups as a kind of drug.

"Adrian, you have a million friends," his mother said. "That's an audited stat. I'm sorry if you feel isolated, but none of us are moving to Bangalore just so you can chum it up with this fellow."
Adrian fought to control his irritation. His mother was always cranky before breakfast, and a full-blown fight could extend that mood through the whole day. No one needed that. "Mom," he said, twisting his body in the narrow, three-person coffin he shared with his folks so that he could look her in the eye, "I'm not asking you to move to India. All I'm doing is explaining my paper."
His mother snorted. "_The Last Generation on Earth_, really! Adrian, if I were your instructor, I sure wouldn't graduate you on the strength of something like that. I don't really care if that boy in India has convinced the ITT people that his trendy little thesis holds water. The University of Toronto has higher standards than that."
It had been a mistake to even discuss it with his mother. At 180, she was hardly equipped to understand the pressures he and his miniscule generation faced. He should've just written it and stuck it in his advisor's public directory. Only just that he'd had the coolest idea in the night and he'd reflexively bounced it off of her: once his generation reached maturity, the whole planet would be post-human, and a new, new era would start. The Bitchun Society, Phase II.

Link, Podcast Feed

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:46:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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