Damien G. Walter » Cory Doctorow

Story Sale to Dark Fiction

Administrator — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:35:17 +0000

My Love Sick Zombie Boy Band, very soon to be published in the Hugo award winning Electric Velocipede magazine, has been accepted by Dark Fictions podcast magazine for their April issue, which will be on the theme of The Waste Land (Death, Living Death and Moral Decay) inspired by the TS Eliot poem.

In only three issues Dark Fiction have published some pretty cool writers including Lauren Beukes, Cory Doctorow and Jon Courtney Grimwood. The story is going to be read by Sam Moffat, who has the perfect voice for MLSZBB’s central character, Fred. This is the third story I have had recorded in audio, so I’m really looking forward to hearing it in April.

You can read an extract of My Love Sick Zombie Boy Band here.

What makes a Hugo nominee tick?

Administrator — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:13:58 +0000

I’ve been lucky enough to interview both Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow in the last year. To celebrate their nominations for both the Hugo and Prometheus awards, here are the two interviews again for anyone who missed them. I learned a lot from doing both interviews. Charlie has an insight into what science fiction is capable of that I had never considered before, and Cory understands the new paradigm between readers and writers better than any other writer working at the moment I believe.

Charlie Stross: Tommorow’s Everyday
Halfway through an exchange of emails with the science fiction writer Charles Stross – a virtual meeting in cyberspace which might have had something of the exotic as little as five years ago – it strikes me that our text-based communication feels almost archaic now.
Read more

Cory Doctorow: willing science fiction into fact
Cory Doctorow’s office lies behind a featureless, black security door in a north London side street, deep in a converted post-industrial warehouse, down echoing corridors and concrete stairways. It’s an appropriately “underground” headquarters for the activist-novelist, who is explaining to me why he’s not interested in predicting the future using science fiction, but influencing it.
Read more

Cory Doctorow Interview

Administrator — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:05:08 +0000

Willing Science Fiction into Fact

Activist-novelist Cory Doctorow explains to Damien G Walter how he hopes his writing will change tomorrow’s world.

Cory Doctorow’s office lies behind a featureless, black security door in a north London side street, deep in a converted post-industrial warehouse, down echoing corridors and concrete stairways. It’s an appropriately “underground” headquarters for the activist-novelist, who is explaining to me why he’s not interested in predicting the future using science fiction, but influencing it.

A Little Space Between Things

Administrator — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:12:56 +0000

I’ve take a little break from writing over the last few weeks. Not a break in writing itself, as I have still done a bit, but a break from making myself write. To paraphrase David Mamet, a writers life is 10% achievement and 90% guilt, but for the last few weeks I’ve taken my foot off the guilt pedal and have just been focussing on daily, mundane life things.

Despite this I have done a teeny bit of fiction writing and quite a lot of thinking. After Clarion I threw myself into a fourth attempt at ‘Unmade Man’, a cyberpunk short story I have been toying with for ages. I made a lot of progress with the first half of the story, but the second half is still a mess. In the words of Jim Kelly, I need to murder my darlings and get rid of the germinal idea from which the story sprang. It just doesn’t fit any more.

Following my contribution to the Positivist vs. Gloommonger debate in the science fiction blogosphere, I started work on a positive science fiction story set in near future UK. I’m really passionate about the value of education, and the story looks at what a radicaly different a approach to education could achieve in the world. The heart of teh story though is a woman recoveirng from teh loss of her husband. I have about two thousand words of this untitled story so far, and am going to keep plugging away at it.

I’ve also been advancing the two novel ideas that seem to be competing for me to write them – the dark elf high fantasy, and a contemporary fantasy set around a family of aristocratic chaos mages. Both ideas have matured masively post-Clarion, I’m just not sure which one to attack first.

My official writing goal for this year is three short stories ready to submit to pro-markets, and a solid draft of a novel to take to WorldCon next August. Entirely achievable, and very exciting to consider.

Sneak Preview – I had a day trip to London yesterday to interview Cory Doctorow. The interview should by up on Guardian online next week, assuming I get it written. Cory is a great writer, energetic eletronic freedom campiagner and a Clarion grad. there is some very cool stuff in the interview so drop Wednesday or Thursday to read it.