Over Clocked – Stories of the Future Present by Cory Doctorow
I feel a disclaimer must be made before you read the review for this collection. I am a geek and a gamer and find that these elements added to my enjoyment of this book so my review may be a bit tainted due to this.
Over Clocked is a collection of short stories published by Thunder’s Mouth Press in 2007. The collection (from here on out I will call it simply ‘book’) has 6 stories of varying length with an adjusted average of about 50 pages per story. One of the nicest portions of the book is the preface that Mr. Doctorow gives to each story. His reasons for writing stories, naming them the way he does and what he hopes people will take out of the stories is almost as interesting as the stories themselves.
There are two stories that people need to read. Yes, that was NEED to read because they matter to readers of this genre who tend to be a bit geeky. Anda’s Game and When Sysadmins Ruled the World are amazing stories that offer the exact intellectual twister that we have come to expect from good science fiction; the beginning of a story that is everyday and ordinary that then mashes itself into a ball and heaves it at your gut until you want to puke at the results.
Anda’s Game (a take off of Ender’s Game in title only), follows the story of a typical player of the World of Warcraft…oops…massively multiplayer online game where you collect gold to buy nifty things like scrolls of protection and the like. Anda became very good at the game and met some good friends online within the game. Her fortunes were getting better when she was asked to go on a side mission for cash, real, cold hard cash, not just the gold that is usually found during a mission. On one of these missions, Anda is confronted by a ‘conscience’ and finds out who the people are that they are fighting. The story then gets mashed up into that ball and is chucked at your midsection. Anda’s Game gives gamers a story they can relate to but puts in a sobering twist that really knocks you.
When SysAdmins Ruled the World was amazing and interesting for anyone who is a computer geek, especially those that are actually sys admins. This story follows the same type of schedule as Anda’s Game and takes the normally mundane life of a computer guy and changes it into an organized government after an attack.
Doctorow’s story telling allows the reader to be fully immersed in the stories but allows several points of intersection with normal life. I would recommend this book to any gamer, geek or nerd but especially to anyone who doesn’t really understand what science fiction is. This book is the example I will use when asked for a recommendation to answer the question, “What is science fiction.”
Oh, and what’s more, you can download it for free.
Fantasy Times Rating: 9.1
