Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 27 February
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
For Cory Doctorow, the purpose of science fiction is not to predict the future – but to understand the present.
The latest book from the irrepressible Canadian activist, editor, journalist and novelist is set in an alarmingly plausible, post-scarcity near future. In Walkaway, all labour is automated, and human beings are either super-rich or surplus. Chaos, violence and catastrophe ensue. Yet, Doctorow asserts, the novel is utopian.
‘Stories of futures in which disaster strikes and we rise to the occasion are a vaccine against the virus of mistrust,’ he has written. ‘The [best] science fiction tells us better nations are ours to build and lets us dream vividly of what it might be like to live in those nations.’
The fixations of Walkaway are the fixations that have defined Doctorow’s career. Through his fiction and journalism – including as a co-editor of Boing Boing – he has sparked and steered debates on digital rights, surveillance, automation, inequality and biotechnology. In all his work, Doctorow brings optimism and imagination as well as hardcore intellect; his idea of utopia is something weird, cooperative, messy and in constant flux.
At St Kilda Town Hall, Doctorow joins author C.S. Pacat for an expansive conversation about the imperfect present and foreseeable future.
Readings will be our bookseller at this event.
Featuring
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger – the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of Walkaway, a novel for adults, a YA graphic novel called In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn't Want to Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture of the Nerds and Makers. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
C.S. Pacat
C.S. Pacat is the New York Times and USA-Today best-selling author of Dark Rise, the Captive Prince trilogy, and the GLAAD-nominated graphic novels Fence, as well as a writer for DC Comics. Educated at the University of Melbourne ...