Heroic Sysadmins and Sentient Boats in Cory Doctorow's "Overclocked"

SFRevu has a review of Cory Doctorow's new collection of short stories, Overclocked. Sounds like more yummy goodness from the politically-minded science fiction nerd whose previous work has featured Disney fetishism, anti-DRM agitprop, and singularity cults. Reviewer Ernest Lilley makes two stories sound particularly good:

[There's a] touching and truthful tribute to sys admins. With whichthe SF readership is rife . . . There's no doubt in mymind but that this vision of geeks holed up in a data center while theoutside world falls apart and all they can do is try to keep theinternet going is dead on. Like Heinlein's heroes in "The Roads MustRoll", we'll go to the mat to keep the wide world of the web fromfailing . . .

One of the very best stories in here is "I Row-Boat" and yes, hethreatens more mutations on the title, possibly writing a story about asentient cheese sandwich ("I Rarebit"). There are lots of good commentson intelligence, consciousness and the meaning of life, all presentedas an engaging theological argument between an AI row boat and a jumpedup coral reef. To say nothing about the human. I'm sending theblog/podcast link off to a friend of mine, a presbyterian minister whoreads SF, just to mess with his head.

Doctorow is on a book tour now, so if you'd like to ask him yourself about rarebit, DRM, or anything else, check out his tour dates.

Review of Overclocked (with interview!) [via SFRevu]