M1k3y doctorow biography

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If today is more than six months since then, you can assume that most of this is no longer valid and shouldn’t be used in, oh, say, the program book of a conference or a newspaper article. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. I’m Cory Doctorow, and like everyone with a personal website, mine is horribly, terribly out of date.

He maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net. Email me and I’ll send you something up to date.

Last update 27 Aug 2025

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Gallery of publicity photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/sets/72157622138315932/

One sentence:

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist and journalist.

Eastern Standard Tribe (2004) treats post-modern tribalism as a distributed network based on information consanguinities rather than blood or proximity; the worldwide membership co-ordinates itself by living according to Eastern Standard Time (i.e.

Entry updated 6 October 2025. In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement.

In 2024, the Media Ecology Association awarded him the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. He holds an honourary doctorate in laws from York University (Canada) and an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor; he is also a Cornell University AD White professor-at-large, a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate and a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science.

As a youth, he was actively involved in environmental organizations.

Literary Career

Novel Trailblazer

Doctorow's debut novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," holds the distinction of being the first novel released under a Creative Commons license, encouraging free distribution of the e-book.

Short Stories and Novels

Over the years, Doctorow has published numerous short stories, novellas, and novels, often releasing them freely online.

The Martin Hench sequence beginning with Red Team Blues (2023) is nonfantastic, though its forensic accountant protagonist's investigations into corporate malfeasance unpack futurewards. In this context, a text like Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools (2002) has proved extremely valuable, perhaps of more permanent use than some of his polemical advocacy, where impatience and enthusiasm sometimes fuse the syntax of argument.

He currently resides in London, where he holds the position of Special Advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy organization.

He has won the Locus, Prometheus, Copper Cylinder, White Pine and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards.

He is the author of dozens of books, most recently ENSHITTIFICATION: WHY EVERYTHING SUDDENLY GOT WORSE AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (nonfiction); and the novels PICKS AND SHOVELS and THE BEZZLE (followups to RED TEAM BLUES).

see also:Ebook; Identity; Laws of Robotics; Money; Torture.

Corey Efram Doctorow

born Toronto, Ontario: 17 July 1971

works

Little Brother

Martin Hench

individual titles

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (New York: Tor, 2003) [hb/Shelley Eshkar]
Eastern Standard Tribe (New York: Tor, 2004) [hb/Shelley Eshkar]
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (New York: Tor, 2005) [hb/Shelley Eshkar]
Makers (London: HarperVoyager, 2009) [hb/Peter Crowther Associates]
For the Win (London: HarperVoyager, 2010) [hb/]
The Rapture of the Nerds (New York: Tor, 2012) with Charles Stross [fixup: early version first appeared May-June 2004 Argosy as one of two standalone volumes: with one further story: hb/uncredited]
Pirate Cinema (New York: Tor Teen, 2012) [hb/]
Walkaway (London: Head of Zeus / New York: Tor, 2017) [hb/Will Staehle]
Attack Surface (New York: Tor, 2020) [hb/]
The Lost Cause (New York: Tor, 2023) [hb/]

collections and stories

A Place So Foreign and Eight More Stories (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003) [coll: pb/Jerry Engelbach]
A Place so Foreign (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2005) [story: ebook: first appeared January 2000 Science Fiction Age: na/]
Home Again, Home Again (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2005) [story: ebook: first appeared in Tesseracts⁸ (anth 1999) edited by John Clute and Candas Jane Dorsey: na/]
Craphound (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2005) [story: ebook: first appeared March 1998 Science Fiction Age: na/]
Return to Pleasure Island (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2005) [story: ebook: first appeared August 2000 Realms of Fantasy: na/]
Shadow of the Mothaship (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2005) [story: ebook: first appeared Winter 2000 Amazing: na/]
Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2007) [coll: pb/davidriedydesign.com]
Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now (San Diego, California: IDW Publishing, 2008) [coll: graph: illus/hb/Paul Pope]
With a Little Help (London: CorDoc-Co/Sweet Home Grindstone Press, 2010) [coll: with four alternate covers: pb/Pablo Defendini: pb/Rick Leider: pb/Rudy Rucker: pb/Frank Wu]
The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (Oakland, California: PM Press/(Outspoken Authors), 2011) [novella: pb/]
Radicalized (New York: Tor, 2019) [coll: hb/Will Staehle]

nonfiction

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction (New York: Alpha Books, 2000) with Karl Schroeder [nonfiction: pb/Don Distel]
Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools (Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media, 2002) [nonfiction: pb/]
Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2008) [nonfiction: coll: pb/]
Context (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2011) [nonfiction: coll: pb/Elizabeth Story]
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do about It (New York: MCD, 2025) [nonfiction: hb/]

works as editor

links

previous versions of this entry

/ Cory Doctorow

photo by Jonathan Worth, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (attribute to JonathanWorth.com, click for high-rez).

More publicity photos can be found here

Hi.

In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement. He is the author of dozens of books, most recently ENSHITTIFICATION: WHY EVERYTHING SUDDENLY GOT WORSE AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (nonfiction); and the novels PICKS AND SHOVELS and THE BEZZLE (followups to RED TEAM BLUES).

Other notable books include the solarpunk novels WALKAWAY and THE LOST CAUSE; the tech policy books THE INTERNET CON and CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM; and the internationally bestselling YA LITTLE BROTHER series; and the picture book POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER. Her gradual discovery that the kind of corporate monster she works for more or less runs the world may seem belated in real-world terms; but is effectively conveyed.

For the Win (2010), a singleton, is placed in a very Near Future world where Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games are being used to manipulate virtual money, within an almost cheery revolutionary frame.

Tagged: Author.

(1971- ) Canadian author and "digital rights activist" (his terminology), who began to publish work of genre interest with "2,000 Year Check-up" for On Spec in 1990, but who came to relatively wide attention with his first mature story, Craphound (March 1998 Science Fiction Age; 2005 ebook), in which Aliens turn out to conceive of the marks and detritus of our human passage over the planet as collectible; bargains are sought and struck.