Craphound by Cory Doctorow (accelerated reader books txt) 📕

Copyright (C) 1998 by Cory Doctorow


Craphound

Cory Doctorow

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

Originally Published in Science Fiction Age

, March 1998

Reprinted in:

* Northern Suns
(Tor, 1999, David Hartwell and Glenn Grant, editors)

* Year's Best Science Fiction XVI
(Morrow, 1999, Gardner Dozois, editor)

* Hayakawa Science Fiction Magazine (Japan)
September 2001

"Like most aliens-mingling-with-human-society stories, Doctorow's story serves
mostly to hold a mirror up to human nature, but the odd corner of human nature
it examines is fascinating, and the story is smoothly and expertly written, with
some good detail and local color and some shrewd insights into human nature and
human culture, and an almost Bradburian vein of rich nostalgia running through
it (although the nostalgia is quirky enough that perhaps it might more usefully
be compared to R.A. Lafferty or Terry Bisson than to Bradbury)."

- Gardner Dozois
Editor, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

--

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

--

A note about this story

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

I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel, "Down and Out in
the Magic Kingdom" (http://craphound.com/down), and it was an unmitigated
success. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the book -- good news -- and
thousands of people bought the book -- also good news. It turns out that, as
near as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is a
great way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting the
book 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 the
Internet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basic
science: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doing
here. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me as
an artist is to not read my work -- to let it languish in obscurity and
disappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, and
this is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to people who
would have bought the book save for the availability of the free electronic text
is no big deal, at least when compared to the horror that is being irrelevant
and unread. And luckily for me, it appears that giving away the text for free
gets me more paying customers than it loses me.

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

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

* You don't charge money for the distribution

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

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

If you'd like, you can advertise the existence of your edition by posting a link
to it at http://craphound.com/place/000012.php

--


Here's a summary of the license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0

Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute,
display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give the
original 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 use
the work for commercial purposes -- unless they get the
licensor's permission.

And here's the license itself:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0-legalcode

THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS
CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORK
IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF
THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE IS
PROHIBITED.

BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPT
AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THE LICENSOR
GRANTS YOU THE RIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOUR
ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

1. Definitions

a. "Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue,
anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in
unmodified form, along with a number of other contributions,
constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are
assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a
Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work (as
defined below) for the purposes of this License.

b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the
Work and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical
arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture
version, 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 a
Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work for the
purpose of this License.

c. "Licensor" means the individual or entity that offers the Work
under the terms of this License.

d. "Original Author" means the individual or entity who created
the Work.

e. "Work" means the copyrightable work of authorship offered
under the terms of this License.

f. "You" means an individual or entity exercising rights under
this License who has not previously violated the terms of this
License with respect to the Work, or who has received express
permission from the Licensor to exercise rights under this
License despite a previous violation.

2. Fair Use Rights. Nothing in this license is intended to
reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use,
first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the
copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws.

3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this
License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free,
non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable
copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated
below:

a. to reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or
more Collective Works, and to reproduce the Work as incorporated
in the Collective Works;

b. to distribute copies or phonorecords of, display publicly,
perform publicly, and perform publicly by means of a digital
audio transmission the Work including as incorporated in
Collective Works;

The above rights may be exercised in all media and formats
whether now known or hereafter devised. The above rights include
the right to make such modifications as are technically necessary
to exercise the rights in other media and formats. All rights not
expressly granted by Licensor are hereby reserved.

4. Restrictions. The license granted in Section 3 above is
expressly made subject to and limited by the following
restrictions:

a. You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
publicly digitally perform the Work only under the terms of this
License, and You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource
Identifier for, this License with every copy or phonorecord of
the Work You distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
publicly digitally perform. You may not offer or impose any terms
on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or
the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder. You may
not sublicense the Work. You must keep intact all notices that
refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties. You
may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or
publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological
measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner
inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. The above
applies to the Work as incorporated in a Collective Work, but
this does not require the Collective Work apart from the Work
itself to be made subject to the terms of this License. If You
create a Collective Work, upon notice from any Licensor You must,
to the extent practicable, remove from the Collective Work any
reference to such Licensor or the Original Author, as requested.

b. You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in
Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or
directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary
compensation. The exchange of the Work for other