[My first print-on-demand book!] ( )

Cory Doctorow is well known activist, journalist, and blogger. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. He's the co-editor of Boing Boing. This book is his latest attempt at pushing the boundaries of book publishing to help authours prosper in the 'digital economy'

And because of all of that, many people forget or will never know the most important fact about Cory for a Goodreads reader... He's an awesome authour.

There are a dozen stories in here, and I'm betting you'll really like at least six of them, and still enjoy the rest. In my case, 'Human Readable' completely sideswiped me. I had so completely identified with one of the characters I finished the story in the same stage of mind he did. There'll be something in here for you too I bet.

Quit reading this and go get a copy, or at least start reading some of it on the book's home page. It's a heck of a lot better read than this review :-) ( )

Doctorow's writing is pretty hit-and-miss when it comes to novels. He tends to overlook or deprecate, without any good reasoning, some of the fundamental concerns of science fiction stories when he writes scifi (a trait he shares with Stross); his story construction for tales of novel length tends to be a bit unimpressive; and his concepts start dragging after a few dozen thousands of words. Some of his novels are quite good, of course (I particularly recommend Little Brother and its sequel Homeland, plus Makers), but some are pretty mediocre. Novels are not his strong suit.

His strong suit is short fiction. His previous short story collection, Overclocked, was excellent, and almost uniformly brilliant. Now, With A Little Help serves to reinforce my impression of his brilliance as a short story author, as it is at least as good as how I recall Overclocked, and perhaps even more consistently excellent. Even the essay from Doctorow's literary agent at the end of the collection is quality writing. I recommend this thing without hesitation.

It's even free for download in several ebook formats. You're out of excuses. Go read it. ( )

The stories in this collection lean heavily towards the dystopic. Police states, rogue AI and runaway corporate powers feature heavily, as do a vivid and warm cast of characters trying to fight the power or just get by. Doctorow's work is superb and thought provoking as ever. ( )

Interesting collection of sci-fi short stories here, the only one I feel fundamentally at odds with quality of the rest is the opening one so in case you feel the same - skip it; there's plenty better to come! ( )