Overview
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....
Synopsis
Now in softcover, the second novel from one of the hottest writers in modern SF
The Washington Post - Larry Tritten
Science fiction may have begun as pulp adventure fiction, but arguably the best sf writers have always transcended genre restrictions by concentrating on character, which is what Doctorow does here. His characters have more in common with those in mainstream novels than with the superficial ones too often found in this genre.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewEastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow's second novel, can be best described as a story about a genius suspected of being insane, written by a genius suspected of being insane -- a brilliant blend of Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk classic Snow Crash.
Art Berry is an agent provocateur in the Eastern Standard Tribe (a secret society bound together by similar sleep schedules) working undercover as a management consultant in England and trying to mire the Greenwich Mean Time tribalists in consumer-unfriendly bureaucracy. Everything is going as planned for Art until he accidentally hits a pedestrian while driving in London. The jaywalker turns out to be a brash American woman from Los Angeles named Linda. After both are treated for minor injuries, they begin an unlikely romance. But when Art comes up with a potential billion-dollar idea that could mean huge gains for the Eastern Standard Tribe, Linda and one of Art's coworkers steal the idea, institutionalize him under false pretenses, and sell the design to the highest bidder. Stuck in a sanitarium for "observation," Art ponders the age-old question: Would he rather be smart or happy?
Like Doctorow's debut novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Eastern Standard Tribe is pure literary genius: an irreverent, disturbing, and uproarious glimpse into the future of the global society. Dedicated tribalists can experience more of Doctorow's twisted wit in A Place So Foreign and Eight More, a collection of his best short stories. Paul Goat Allen
Vancouver Sun
"Artful and confident…Like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Doctorow has discovered that the present world is science fiction, if you look at it from the right angle.Toronto Now
"Bravura…Cory Doctorow writes fast and furiously, the words gushing out of him in a stream of metaphor and imagery that keeps you glued to his futurist tales. You're going to hear a lot more from this guy.Toronto Star
"Immediately accessible…Doctorow maintains an unrelenting pace; many readers will find themselves finishing the novel, as I did, in a single sitting.Locus
"At its heart, Tribe is a witty, sometimes acerbic poke in the eye at modern culture. Everything comes under Doctorow's microscope, and he manages to be both up to date and off the cuff in the best possible way.NPR
"What is unexpected, shocking even, is how smart Doctorow is when it comes to the human heart, and how well he's able to articulate it.From the Publisher
"Artful and confident...Like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Doctorow has discovered that the present world is science fiction, if you look at it from the right angle."—Vancouver Sun on Eastern Standard Tribe"Doctorow lives up to the promise of his first novel...This short novel's occasionally bitter, sometimes hilarious and always wackily appealing protagonist consistently skewers those evils of modern culture he holds most pernicious."—Publishers Weekly on Eastern Standard Tribe
"Bravura...Cory Doctorow writes fast and furiously, the words gushing out of him in a stream of metaphor and imagery that keeps you glued to his futurist tales. You're going to hear a lot more from this guy." —Toronto Now on Eastern Standard Tribe
"Immediately accessible...Doctorow maintains an unrelenting pace; many readers will find themselves finishing the novel, as I did, in a single sitting."—Toronto Star on Eastern Standard Tribe
"As in Down and Out, Doctorow shows here that he's got the modern world, in all its Googled, Friendstered and PDA-d glory, completely sussed."—Kirkus Reviews on Eastern Standard Tribe
"At its heart, Tribe is a witty, sometimes acerbic poke in the eye at modern culture. Everything comes under Doctorow's microscope, and he manages to be both up to date and off the cuff in the best possible way."—Locus on Eastern Standard Tribe
"Doctorow peppers his novel with technology so palpable you want to order it up on the web. You'll probably get the chance. But technology is not the point here. What is unexpected, shocking even, is how smart Doctorow is when it comes to the human heart, and how well he's able to articulate it...af0 .He seems smart because he makes the reader feel smart. When Doctorow talks, when Art argues, we just get it. There's nothing between the language and the meaning. The prose is funny, simple and straightforward. This is a no-BS book."—NPR on Eastern Standard Tribe
"Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar—a hard combination to beat (or, these days, to find)."—William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
"I know many science fiction writers engaged in the cyber-world, but Cory Doctorow is a native...We should all hope and trust that our culture has the guts and moxie to follow this guy. He's got a lot to tell us." —Bruce Sterling
"Cory Doctorow is just far enough ahead of the game to give you the authentic chill of the future...Funny as hell and sharp as steel."—Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan
"Cory Doctorow knocks me out. In a good way."—Pat Cadigan, author of Synners
"Cory Doctorow is the most interesting new SF writer I've come across in years. He starts out at the point where older SF writers' speculations end."—Rudy Rucker, author of Spaceland
"Cory Doctorow doesn't just write about the future—I think he lives there"—Kelly Link
"Bravura...Cory Doctorow writes fast and furiously, the words gushing out of him in a stream of metaphor and imagery that keeps you glued to his futurist tales." -Toronto Now on Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Larry Tritten
Science fiction may have begun as pulp adventure fiction, but arguably the best sf writers have always transcended genre restrictions by concentrating on character, which is what Doctorow does here. His characters have more in common with those in mainstream novels than with the superficial ones too often found in this genre.— The Washington Post