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Eastern Standard Tribe
by: Cory Doctorow

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780765310453
ISBN: 0765310457
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: April 01, 2005
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: March 10, 2005
Sales Rank: 581479
Studio: Tor Books

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:

A comedy of loyalty, betrayal, sex, madness, and music-swapping
Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He's doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without a question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth onto the world.

Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art's real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.

Instant wireless communication puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn't changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into Tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations. Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted-not happiness, not money, and most certainly not love.

Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain....

Amazon.com Review:
Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe is a soothsaying jaunt into the not-so-distant future, where 24/7 communication and chatroom alliances have evolved into tribal networks that secretly work against each other in shadowy online realms. The novel opens with its protagonist, the peevish Art Berry, on the roof of an asylum. He wonders if it's better to be smart or happy. His crucible is a pencil up the nose for a possible 'homebrew lobotomy.' To explain Art's predicament, Doctorow flashes backward and slowly fills in the blanks. As a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, Art is one of many in the now truly global village who have banded together out of like-minded affinity for a particular time zone and its circadian cycles. Art may have grown up in Toronto but his real homeland is an online grouping that prefers bagels and hot dogs to the fish and chips of their rivals who live on Greenwich Mean Time. As he rises through the ranks of the tribe, he is sent abroad to sabotage the traffic patterns and communication networks in the GMT tribe. Along the way, he comes across a humdinger of an idea that will solve a music piracy problem on the highways of his own beloved timezone, raise his status in the tribe and make him rich. If only he could have trusted his tightly wound girlfriend and fellow tribal saboteur, he probably wouldn't be on the booby hatch roof with that pencil up his nose.

As a musing on the future, Doctorow's extrapolation seems entirely plausible. And, not only is EST a fascinating mental leap it's a witty and savvy tale that will appeal to anyone who's lived another life, however briefly, online. --Jeremy Pugh

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Weak ideas poorly executed
Disappointing book about a Canadian who is working in London as a provocateur on behalf of his brethren back in the Eastern Standard Tribe. He is a user interface designer for Virgin/Deutsche Telecom in London, but his real mission is to make life harder for users belonging to the Greenwich Mean Tribe.

Doctorow's premises are not very convincing (loyalty to a time zone? using cars as music servers is supposed to be a good idea? reforming mental health care based on a few questionable patents would actually go anywhere?), and the main character is supposed to be smart and creative, but appears anything but. His supposedly "wonderful rhetoric" is not particularly wonderful, and his bright ideas are no more or less than the stuff techices crank out over beer seven days a week everywhere. Maybe Doctorow intended for this guy to be self delusional? My impression, however, is that Doctorow wanted Art to actually ... Read More

Rating:

- est-oundingly clever
This book is really fast moving like the events and people it portrays. From a kid explaining theology to a priest to a Pinky & the Brain scenario of taking over the world (or at least a part of it), Doctorow's ideas flash by you.

While not overly techie there's enough thrown in to capture the feel, but us oldies, who remember when MS-DOS (look it up, kids) was new, are able to keep up.

I particularly enjoyed the intelligence that went into this. The unforced humor was the key to my liking it as much as I did. I've already ordered more of his books.

Rating:

- Not as good as it should have been
Just a mild disappointment after reading Down and Out at the Magic Kingdom. Many of the same ideas are here, online affinity groups, peer moderation, and creeping insanity.

Rating:

- A Sort Little Jaunt Into a Possible Future.
I wasn't too impressed. Like others have said before me the Story had lots of Potential but in the end was poorly executed. It was a short read which I finished before bed in a couple of nights and I've heard Doctorow has better works which I may try in the future.

The interlinked world which Doctorow describes is entirely possible. One of my problems with the story is that parts of it are too real. Online chat channels complete with trolls. If I wanted that I could log into any chatroom from MSN to MySpace to Second Life(which can come with troll avis dressed as real trolls).

I liked Art but could never really sign onto his mission. The possibility of other tribes being out there completely untied to the time zones is there but not explored. The majority of the common people seem to me to be mundanes (Art dealing with a call from his Grandma just as he is trying to have a romantic moment ... Read More

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