A Place so Foreign Read online

  Copyright (C) 2000 by Corey Doctorow

  A Place So Foreign

  Cory Doctorow

  From "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," a short story collection published inSeptember, 2003 by Four Walls Eight Windows Press (ISBN 1568582862). Seehttps://craphound.com/place for more.

  Originally Published in Science Fiction Age, January 2000

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  Blurbs and quotes:

  * Cory Doctorow straps on his miner's helmet and takes you deep into the caverns and underground rivers of Pop Culture, here filtered through SF-coloured glasses. Enjoy. - Neil Gaiman Author of American Gods and Sandman

  * Few writers boggle my sense of reality as much as Cory Doctorow. His vision is so far out there, you'll need your GPS to find your way back. - David Marusek Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, Nebula Award nominee

  * Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you're going to find.

  - Gardner Dozois Editor, Asimov's SF

  * He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow! - Bruce Sterling Author of The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction

  * Cory Doctorow strafes the senses with a geekspeedfreak explosion of gomi kings with heart, weirdass shapeshifters from Pleasure Island and jumping automotive jazz joints. If this is Canadian science fiction, give me more. - Nalo Hopkinson Author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring

  * Cory Doctorow is the future of science fiction. An nth-generation hybrid of the best of Greg Bear, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling and Groucho Marx, Doctorow composes stories that are as BPM-stuffed as techno music, as idea-rich as the latest issue of NEW SCIENTIST, and as funny as humanity's efforts to improve itself. Utopian, insightful, somehow simultaneously ironic and heartfelt, these nine tales will upgrade your basal metabolism, overwrite your cortex with new and efficient subroutines and generally improve your life to the point where you'll wonder how you ever got along with them. Really, you should need a prescription to ingest this book. Out of all the glittering crap life and our society hands us, craphound supreme Doctorow has managed to fashion some industrial-grade art." - Paul Di Filippo Author of The Steampunk Trilogy

  * As scary as the future, and twice as funny. In this eclectic and electric collection Doctorow strikes sparks off today to illuminate tomorrow, which is what SF is supposed to do. And nobody does it better. - Terry Bisson Author of Bears Discover Fire

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  A note about this story

  This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," publishedby Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I'vereleased this story, along with five others, under the terms of a CreativeCommons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyrightnormally reserves for me, the creator.

  I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel, "Down and Out inthe Magic Kingdom" (https://craphound.com/down), and it was an unmitigatedsuccess. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the book -- good news -- andthousands of people bought the book -- also good news. It turns out that, asnear as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is agreat way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting thebook into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work.

  I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age of theInternet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basicscience: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doinghere. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me asan artist is to not read my work -- to let it languish in obscurity anddisappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, andthis is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to people whowould have bought the book save for the availability of the free electronic textis no big deal, at least when compared to the horror that is being irrelevantand unread. And luckily for me, it appears that giving away the text for freegets me more paying customers than it loses me.

  You can find the canonical version of this file athttps://craphound.com/place/download.php

  If you'd like to convert this file to some other format and distribute it, youhave my permission, provided that:

  * You don't charge money for the distribution

  * You keep the entire text intact, including this notice, the license below, andthe metadata at the end of the file

  * You don't use a file-format that has "DRM" or "copy-protection" or any otherform of use-restriction turned on

  If you'd like, you can advertise the existence of your edition by posting a linkto it at https://craphound.com/place/000013.php

  --

  Here's a summary of the license:

  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give theoriginal author credit.No Derivative Works. The licensor permits others to copy,distribute, display and perform only unaltered copies of the work-- not derivative works based on it.Noncommercial. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,display, and perform the work. In return, licensees may not usethe work for commercial purposes -- unless they get thelicensor's permission.

  And here's the license itself:https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0-legalcode

  THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THISCREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORKIS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OFTHE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE ISPROHIBITED.BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPTAND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THE LICENSORGRANTS YOU THE RIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOURACCEPTANCE OF SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS.1. Definitionsa. "Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue,anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety inunmodified form, along with a number of other contributions,constituting separate and independent works in themselves, areassembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes aCollective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work (asdefined below) for the purposes of this License.b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon theWork and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musicalarrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion pictureversion, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment,condensation, or any other form in which the Work may be recast,transformed, or adapted, except that a work that constitutes aCollective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work for thepurpose of this License.c. "Licensor" means the individual or entity that offers the Workunder the terms of this License.d. "Original Author" means the individual or entity who createdthe Work.e. "Work" means the copyrightable work of authorship offeredunder the terms of this License.f. "You" means an individual or entity exercising rights underthis License who has not previously violated the terms of thisLicense with respect to the Work, or who has received expresspermission from the Licensor to exercise rights under thisLicense despite a previous violation.2. Fair Use Rights. Nothing in this license is intended toreduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use,first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of thecopyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws.3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of thisLicense, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free,non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicablecopyright) license to exer
cise the rights in the Work as statedbelow:a. to reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one ormore Collective Works, and to reproduce the Work as incorporatedin the Collective Works;b. to distribute copies or phonorecords of, display publicly,perform publicly, and perform publicly by means of a digitalaudio transmission the Work including as incorporated inCollective Works;The above rights may be exercised in all media and formatswhether now known or hereafter devised. The above rights includethe right to make such modifications as are technically necessaryto exercise the rights in other media and formats. All rights notexpressly granted by Licensor are hereby reserved.4. Restrictions. The license granted in Section 3 above isexpressly made subject to and limited by the followingrestrictions:a. You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, orpublicly digitally perform the Work only under the terms of thisLicense, and You must include