Cory Doctorow's New Thriller Dramatizes 'Cryptocurrency Shenanigans' and 'Financial Rot' (macmillan.com) 29
Cory Doctorow just wrote a new thriller "about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works," according to his publisher. Doctorow calls Red Team Blues "a book about the financial rot at the center of Silicon Valley... a kind of anti-finance finance thriller."
The publisher describes the book's hero as "a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. " He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike.
He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life.
Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before — and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.
"I write when I'm anxious, and right now these are anxious times," Doctorow explained last month in Publisher's Weekly, describing what he'd learned about selling audiobooks without going through Amazon's service Audible. This time Cory got 4,080 backers to pledge $152,735 to fund an audiobook for Red Team Blues read by Wil Wheaton that his Kickstarter campaign stressed would be DRM-free. ("Every audiobook sold on Audible be wrapped in Amazon's Digital Rights Management technology, which is a felony for you to remove, even if the copyright holder asks you to. It's punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine!")
Red Team Blues is the first book in a new trilogy, and Cory is now making in-person appearances to promote the book — starting today (and tomorrow) at the LA Times Festival of Books at the University of Southern California. Tuesday he'll be in San Diego, and a week from Sunday he's appearing in San Francisco, before heading to Portland, Mountain View, Berkeley, and Gaithersburg Maryland.
The publisher describes the book's hero as "a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. " He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike.
He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life.
Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before — and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.
"I write when I'm anxious, and right now these are anxious times," Doctorow explained last month in Publisher's Weekly, describing what he'd learned about selling audiobooks without going through Amazon's service Audible. This time Cory got 4,080 backers to pledge $152,735 to fund an audiobook for Red Team Blues read by Wil Wheaton that his Kickstarter campaign stressed would be DRM-free. ("Every audiobook sold on Audible be wrapped in Amazon's Digital Rights Management technology, which is a felony for you to remove, even if the copyright holder asks you to. It's punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine!")
Red Team Blues is the first book in a new trilogy, and Cory is now making in-person appearances to promote the book — starting today (and tomorrow) at the LA Times Festival of Books at the University of Southern California. Tuesday he'll be in San Diego, and a week from Sunday he's appearing in San Francisco, before heading to Portland, Mountain View, Berkeley, and Gaithersburg Maryland.
But the next fear is already here (Score:2)
I feel like the era of bottom-up crypto has ended, and the only real risk is now governments adopting it as a convenient way to spy on everyone even more than now, via the public ledger. Doctrow better start his new book, where all the young men fall in love with AI waifus and drop out of society.
Re: But the next fear is already here (Score:1)
No way, there are still *so many* fools out there waiting to be parted from their money. That ain't going nowhere
Re: (Score:2)
"I feel like the era of bottom-up crypto has ended"
No way, there are still *so many* fools out there waiting to be parted from their money. That ain't going nowhere
Don't need crypto for that, just another election cycle -- fools and their money will be parted.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't need crypto for that, just another election cycle -- fools and their money will be parted.
So, so true [tumblr.com].
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like the era of bottom-up crypto has ended
It pretty much jumped the shark when they put an NFT joke in the Santa Clause Disney+ series.
Re: But the next fear is already here (Score:2)
It's a little late (Score:2)
When the bottom fell out of the cryptocurrency market, even non-technical people became aware of the scam. At this point, it's likely very few people need to be "awakened" to it.
But some people here like reading his stuff, so - here's a new book for you to buy.
Re: (Score:2)
Buy? As in, I own it and can do whatever I want with it? Never asking for Mommy May I permission to a remote server?
Yes. MacMillan, Hardcover, $27
Re:It's a little late (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. The author, Cory Doctrow, has spent a very long time fighting against DRM. If you go to the Kickstarter site, it literally says "Crowdfunding for a DRM-free audiobook of the first Marty Hench novel" and he sums up his feelings toward Audible's DRM with the line "Ugh. Fuck that, right?"
So yes, buy as in you own it and can do whatever you want with it without permission from a remote server.
Re: (Score:2)
But some people here like reading his stuff, so - here's a new book for you to buy.
I thought ChatGPT was supposed to be putting people like him out of a job. Out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT to produce a short psychological thriller about cryptocurrency. It produced a story about a guy who gets taken for a crypto scam and then kills himself. That was darker than I expected.
Re: (Score:2)
...Out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT to produce a short psychological thriller about cryptocurrency. It produced a story about a guy who gets taken for a crypto scam and then kills himself. That was darker than I expected.
Hmm. Ask it to do it in the style of Twilight Zone's "To Serve Man". See if it comes up with avocado and toast.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, not quite. There are still tons of believers. But these are hardcore ignorant and cannot simply be presented with facts. More likely every last of the true believers has to go bankrupt before they start noticing that they may have been wrong all along and a book is not going to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
"Circumventing" technological measures (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone explain what law this is a reference to? It surely isn't DMCA, because DMCA's 1201(a)(3)(A) defines "circumvention" as:
which of course means that if the copyright owner authorizes defeating the DRM, then there's no way to for "circumvention" to ever happen, so all the rest of the shit in 1201(a) doesn't apply to the situation. You most certainly may remove the DRM if the copyright owner authorizes it.
I suppose he might be talking about 1201(b)(2)(B), where circumvention's definition doesn't mention anything about copyright owners' authority..
Also, it seems reasonable to infer that copyright owner's authorization likely still plays a part, or else it would be illegal to even manufacture licensed DVD players, your web browser's widevide decoder would be illegal, etc. Basically, anything that is compatible with a DRM scheme must necessarily be a violation, and I haven't read any stories that Sony, Google, Microsoft etc have recently been sued to death.
So if it's not DMCA that he's talking about, what is it?
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
Being one of a small group of excellent writers which make today's SF matter, among which I'd see at least John Scalzi and Charles Stross, too, Doctorow perhaps might be the one of them whose critique of society and economy is the most pronounced, the most spot-on and the most relevent for the present... Can't wait to read this.
Re: (Score:2)
But I think it's weird so many adult techies fawn over him...
It's because he releases his published IP without DRM. Then again, so does Taylor Swift.
Re: Excellent (Score:1)
Formerly Great Writer (Score:2)
I love science fiction. I desperately want newer/modern era sci-fi writers to succeed. So it's incredibly troubling to me that Doctorow's work is trending downward, HARD.
Overclocked (2007) is an excellent collection of short stories that got every reader excited about Doctorow's potential.
Pirate Cinema (2012) is engaging and about serious issues, but first and foremost is a fun read which mitigates the juvenile-ishness.
Walkaway (2017) is one of the BEST sci-fi books written in the last decade, period.
My experience (Score:1)