Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow on Walkaway: This will all be so great if we don’t screw it up

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photo by Jonathan Worth

Cory Doctorow is probably my all time most favorite science fiction writer. The reason for that is simple – Doctorow is not only a great story-teller but also an activist. To paraphrase Karl Marx, writers have tried to capture and describe the world but the point, however, is to change it. And Cory is a fantastic example of an author who doesn’t spend his life in solitude or writing retreats. No. Doctorow jumps right in the trenches and is not afraid to get his hands dirty in doing what is necessary and what is right. Needless to say, I was elated to have him back on my podcast but, if you haven’t seen his 1st interview, you may want to start here: Cory Doctorow on AI.

During today’s 90-minute interview with Cory Doctorow, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why Walkaway is an optimistic disaster novel; the history and concept of walkaway; elite panic and A Paradise Built in Hell; the purpose, function and necessity of the nation-state; modern monetary theory and the new green deal; exponential technology, post scarcity and abundance; the Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren; Resisting Reduction, Transhumanism and immortality; Radicalized and our present moment; the biggest issues that our civilization is facing; AI, the singularity and technological unemployment; Ada Palmer, human agency, the past and the future; polarization and the scientific method; Karl Schroeder‘s tremendous impact on both Cory and me…

My 2 favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with Cory Doctorow are:

Multiplicity is better than a singularity.

The reason to care about the destiny of technology and our civilization is not merely because getting it wrong will be terrible but also because getting it right will be amazing. There is so much more at stake than averting apocalypse. There is ushering in utopia.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Cory Doctorow?

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to many magazines, websites and newspapers. He is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor; he is also a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate and a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. In 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

His novels have been translated into dozens of languages and are published by Tor Books, Head of Zeus (UK), Titan Books (UK) and HarperCollins (UK). 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.

His recent books include RADICALIZED (2019) and WALKAWAY (2017), science fiction for adults; IN REAL LIFE, a young adult graphic novel created with Jen Wang (2014); and INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE, a business book about creativity in the Internet age (2014).

His latest young adult novel is HOMELAND, the bestselling sequel to 2008’s LITTLE BROTHER. His New York Times Bestseller LITTLE BROTHER was published in 2008. His latest short story collection is WITH A LITTLE HELP, available in paperback, ebook, audiobook and limited edition hardcover. In 2011, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called CONTEXT: FURTHER SELECTED ESSAYS ON PRODUCTIVITY, CREATIVITY, PARENTING, AND POLITICS IN THE 21ST CENTURY (with an introduction by Tim O’Reilly) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called CORY DOCTOROW’S FUTURISTIC TALES OF THE HERE AND NOW. THE GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW, a PM Press Outspoken Authors chapbook, was also published in 2011.

LITTLE BROTHER was nominated for the 2008 Hugo, Nebula, Sunburst and Locus Awards. It won the Ontario Library White Pine Award, the Prometheus Award as well as the Indienet Award for bestselling young adult novel in America’s top 1000 independent bookstores in 2008; it was the San Francisco Public Library’s One City/One Book choice for 2013. It has also been adapted for stage by Josh Costello.

He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, and serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, the Open Technology Fund and the Metabrainz Foundation.

Cory Doctorow: Stupid Laws & Benevolent Dictators can Ruin the Web

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Cory Doctorow Decentrized WebCory Doctorow is not merely a science fiction author stuck in the realms of his own imagination. No. Cory is also an activist bent on fighting some of the David vs Goliath type of battles of our technological age. Battles we all need to fight. And that is why he often says that science fiction is about the present. [And it is also why Doctorow is my most favorite science fiction persona of his generation.]

Cory gave this talk at the Internet Archive’s Decentralized Web Summit. And, while he is always fantastic, this one must be among his most powerful speeches because in addition to his usual brilliant wit, clarity in detail, logic and argumentation, I also find it very emotionally moving. Check it out and see what you think for yourself.

Doctorow’s Synopsis: This talk, which opened the second half of the day, was about “Ulysses pacts“: bargains you make with yourself when your willpower is strong to prevent giving into temptation later when you are tired or demoralized, and how these have benefited the web to date, and how new, better ones can protect the decentralized web of the future.

 

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Cory Doctorow on AI: The Singularity Is A Progressive Apocalypse

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Portrait by Jonathan Worth

Cory Doctorow is one of my all-time most favorite science fiction writers. So it is no surprise I had so much fun interviewing him.

I don’t know how he does it, but Cory is one of those rare individuals who can juggle successfully being a father, an avid reader, a blogger, an activist, a journalist, and a prolific science fiction writer, all at once.

It is for this reason that I was persistent in chasing Cory for over 2 years so that I can finally get him on Singularity 1 on 1. And it was totally worth it: Doctorow is indeed a very dynamic, eloquent, passionate, challenging, and fun interlocutor.

During our conversation, Cory covers a wide variety of topics such as: how Star Wars inspired him to become a science fiction writer; Cory’s initial jobs as a bookstore seller, Greenpeace activist, web developer, entrepreneur, and director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; the intimate relationship between being a science fiction writer, a blogger and an activist; the motivation and goals behind his work; what science fiction is about and what it is good and bad at doing; Doctorow’s take on the technological singularity as a “progressive apocalypse”; his “militant atheism” and technology activism.

Some of my favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with Cory are:

Science fiction is very good at predicting the present.

[…]

Evolution is not perfection. Evolution is suitability.

[…]

We have failed to appreciate the gravitas of the internet and continue to regulate it as if it is a glorified video on demand service. And as we do this, we put everything that we do on the internet – which is everything – in jeopardy.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Cory Doctorow?

photo by Jonathan Worth

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and a contributor to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Senior Lecturer; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

His novels have been translated into dozens of languages and are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His New York Times Bestseller Little Brother was published in May 2008. A sequel, Homeland, will be published in 2013, and another young adult novel, Pirate Cinema will precede it in October 2012. His latest short story collection is With a Little Help, available in paperback, ebook, audiobook and limited edition hardcover. In 2011, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called Context (with an introduction by Tim O’Reilly) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now. His latest adult novel is Makers, published by Tor Books/HarperCollins UK in October, 2009. The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, a PM Press Outspoken Authors chapbook, was also published in 2011.

Little Brother was nominated for the 2008 Hugo, Nebula, Sunburst and Locus Awards. It won the Ontario Library White Pine Award, the Prometheus Award as well as the Indienet Award for bestselling young adult novel in America’s top 1000 independent bookstores in 2008.

He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, The Glenn Gould Foundation, and the Chabot Space & Science Center’s SpaceTime project.

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, “The William Gibson of his generation.” He was also named one of Forbes Magazine’s 2007/8/9/10 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for 2007.

His forthcoming books include The Rapture of the Nerds (a novel for adults, written with Charles Stross); Anda’s Game (a graphic novel from FirstSecond).

On February 3, 2008, he became a father. The little girl is called Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, and is a marvel that puts all the works of technology and artifice to shame.

Other Science Fiction Authors on Singularity 1 on 1:

Copyright Was Just The Beginning: Cory Doctorow on the Coming War on General Computation

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I have always been a huge fan of Cory Doctorow’s – I read his books, I listen to his podcast, I watch his numerous and always ground-breaking keynote speeches and I value his insights and expert opinion.

This time, however, Cory outdid even himself.

Below you can watch Doctorow’s seminal keynote speech given at the 28th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.

In addition, since the original video recording was released under a creative commons licence and given the immense importance of the topic, I decided to post the audio via my Singularity 1 on 1 podcast.

So, you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the full video recording below. I hope you find it as inspiring, as enraging and as profound as I did.

Enjoy!

 

Abstract:

“The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to “secure” anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

And general purpose computers can cause harm — whether it’s printing out AR15 components, causing mid-air collisions, or snarling traffic. So the number of parties with legitimate grievances against computers are going to continue to multiply, as will the cries to regulate PCs.

The primary regulatory impulse is to use combinations of code-signing and other “trust” mechanisms to create computers that run programs that users can’t inspect or terminate, that run without users’ consent or knowledge, and that run even when users don’t want them to.

The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression.

Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse.”

To read the full English transcript of Cory Doctorow’s keynote speech click here. (Read German version here.)

Audio Update:

Cory Doctorow’s Interview with CBC’s Spark on the coming war on general-purpose computation

 

Video Update: Cory Doctorow at Google – The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing

Who governs digital trust?

Doctorow framed the question this way: “Computers are everywhere. They are now something we put our whole bodies into—airplanes, cars—and something we put into our bodies—pacemakers, cochlear implants. They HAVE to be trustworthy.”

Sometimes humans are not so trustworthy, and programs may override you: “I can’t let you do that, Dave.” (Reference to the self-protective insane computer Hal in Kubrick’s film “2001.” That time the human was more trustworthy than the computer.) Who decides who can override whom?

The core issues for Doctorow come down to Human Rights versus Property Rights, Lockdown versus Certainty, and Owners versus mere Users.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/gbYXBJOFgeI[/youtube]

 

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Will 2012 Be 1984: DRM and SOPA are Breaking The Internet!

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Imagine a world where someone has a monopoly over the media, backed by the power to ban personal privacy and political dissent and capable of preventing people from public gathering and collective discussion without due process, judicial review or any evidence!

Sound familiar?!

Some of you might venture a guess that the above text reads like a passage from George Orwell’s 1984.

Others might say that it sounds like the situation under the totalitarian regimes of the former Eastern Block or any other contemporary autoritarian.

It is vital to realize, however, that this is not only fiction. This is not just the situation in some geographically obscure country stuck in the last 6 seconds of the evening newscast.

This is infact the future reality that we might be facing today, here, in the “free world.”

This is Canada, the United States and the European Union.

Attempts at removing privacy switches and settings on the internet, Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which literary takes over your computer and legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Canada’s Bill C32 and the notorious European internet disconection laws for cutting people off from the internet without due process, judicial review or even the spec of any evidence, are threatening our freedom.

Are we not following in the steps of Syria and China in building national firewalls, even if it is “to block pirates”?

Can we have global phenomena such as the Arab Spring in such a context?

Did we forget that the Russian government used software piracy as a pretext for confiscating activists’ computers and the Chinese government used it to silence the 2008 Beijing Olympics critics and other political dissent?

Are we not outraged to hear that Congressional staffers behind SOPA get shiny new jobs as entertainment industry lobbyists?

So, what can I do, you may ask?

Well, you can start like Seth Godin by asking and finding out Who wants to break the internet?

Then you can watch the short 4 min SOPA video backgrounder and 1 (or both) of the Cory Doctorow videos below to learn about the issues in the easiest way possible.

Cory takes us beyond the idiotic dichotomy “copyright protection is good” vs “copyright protection is bad” and instead asks a very simple question:

What do we want copyright to do and how do we accomplish that?

The answer is easy: We want copyright that fosters innovation and protects the rights of content creators while providing the best net benefit to consumers.

Then we look at what we have now, get angry, get off our sofas, pick up the phone or start our word-editors and begin making a lot of noise.

We write to our congressmen!

We name and shame the people and companies who challenge our freedoms!

We name and shame the politicians who prefer to serve the above sorry lot rather than their true constituents!

We sign up the petition at AmericanCensorship.org

We kick ass,  get things done and change the world!

We stop SOPA and prevent 2012 from becoming 1984!

***

A Short 4 min Backgrouder: Protect IP/SOPA Breaks the Internet

 

Khan Academy explains SOPA/PIPA

 

The Fall Of SOPA

The SOPA debacle explained in 3 minutes.

 

Clay Shirky’s TED Talk on Why SOPA is a Bad Idea

 

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A Little Bit Pregnant: Cory Doctorow at Boundaries, Frontiers and Gatekeepers iSchool Conference

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Yesterday I attended the keynote speech at the Boundaries, Frontiers & Gatekeepers third annual University of Toronto iSchool student conference.

The keynote speaker at the conference was best selling author, activist and blogger Cory Doctorow, whose presentation was titled A Little Bit Pregnant: Why it’s a Bad Idea to Regulate Computers the Way We Regulate Radios, Guns, Uranium and Other Special-Purpose Tools.

In his keynote speech Cory addresses the issue of computer regulation in general and, more specifically, asks: What happens when we take the failed regulatory model from the copy-right realm and try to import it into other realms too? What are the consequences?

Here are some key points from Doctorow’s speech:

“Designing general purpose computers that sneak around their owners’ backs is a terrible idea. We’ve already seen what happens when you add just a little bit of control to networks and computers – most recently we saw Iran’s and Egypt’s secret police mining Facebook to figure out whom to arrest. Virus writers and identity thieves have already figured out that when there is a technology, that is supposed to prevent copying, running on a computer, that prevents certain programs from being seen or modified by users, that those are the programs you’d want to infect with your viruses because they also cannot be seen by the user of the computer.

[…]

Once we create the facility to lawfully intercept terrorist communications, or to speedily take down copy-right-infringement or to interdict pirate software, or to remotely prevent bad radios from running, we create the tools by which tyrants, crooks, snoops and jerks will spy on and control us, even if for the best of reasons.

[…]

Building a general purpose PC that is just a little bit locked down is like finding a woman who is just a little bit pregnant. Once the facility can be used for a legitimate purpose, it can also be used for illegitimate purpose…”

So, what is Cory’s proposed way of addressing some of the more clear-cut current and potential future problems surrounding the usage of general purpose computers, such as creating DIY super-bugs, illicit criminal or terrorist communications and child-pornography?

Well, you’ll have to hear his keynote speech in full to find out.

P.S. Special thanks to Mike, Joseph and the rest of the TVO crew who so generously provided a line-in for my audio recorder in order to capture the best possible audio quality for this singularity podcast.

Update: Due to readers’ requests I am also posting the audio of the question period after the keynote speech:

 

Video Update: TVO just posted the video on their YouTube Channel:

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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (free book)

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I have received a number of emails from blog readers who truly enjoyed different chapters of Cory Doctorow‘s self-published collection of short stories called With A Little Help.

Today I decided to follow up with Little Brother – another one of Doctorow’s previous publications.

As always, Cory has provided a link to a free Creative Commons version of the text of Little Brother. You can click here to download it in a variety of formats from ePub to Kindle, Pdf, plain text and many others.

Alternatively, you can purchase the print version from Amazon here or check out a sample of the DRM-free audio book and buy it below.

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Epoch by Cory Doctorow (With A Little Help Chapter 13)

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Book Cover by Rick Lieder

A couple of weeks ago Cory Doctorow released his first self-published short story collection titled With A Little Help.

Cory has always released his books under the Creative Commons open license, which allows his readers to share and re-mix his books. This time around Doctorow is experimenting in self-publishing the book in a number of different formats from free text and audio podcast, through an audio CD book, to a limited edition hard cover physical book.

In my opinion, together with Charlie Stross, Cory Doctorow is among the most prolific and visionary science fiction writers of our generation. Amazingly, his prolific writing seems to improve, rather than dilute the quality of his work, and With A Little Help is a good example of that.

You can click any of the title links above and visit his book’s home page for more information on how to buy a copy, or, you can download the full text for free here.

For the past two weeks I have been publishing a free chapter of his audio book as a daily special podcast feature for Singularity 1 on 1.

Today I am posting the very last one: Chapter 13 – Epoch. (Audio read by Jesse Brown)

Epoch was commissioned by the Ubuntu project‘s Mark Shuttleworth for a one-time fee of 10,000 dollars and tells the story of the first systems administrator who had to turn off i.e. kill the very first AI.

(As always, you can stream the podcast above or download the mp3 file in full.)

Enjoy!

Finally, check out the very interesting epilogue for Cory’s book, as recorded by Russel Galen — Cory’s literary agent,  titled: I Am Only In It For The Money.

The epilogue is only 9 minutes long and deals with the age-old economic model of the publishing business which is currently being radically challenged by the advent of a number of technologies such as the internet, digital media and e-books.


Right Click To Download


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Chicken Little by Cory Doctorow (With A Little Help Chapter 12)

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Book Cover by Rick Lieder

Today I am posting Chapter 12 – Chicken Little.

Doctorow wrote Chicken Little for a tribute anthology to Frederik Pohl, since it was inspired by The Space Merchants – a science fiction novel which Pohl co-wrote with Cyril M. Kornbluth in 1952.

In his short story, Cory explores the idea that happiness, perceived happiness and predicted happiness can be completely dis-joined.  For him, this observation raises an interesting and important question about our contemporary era, where often governments tend to see their role as a manager rather than a representative of the people.

The main question here is: If you can make people happier by changing the way they feel about their circumstances, isn’t that easier than changing the circumstances themselves?

Enjoy!

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Pester Power by Cory Doctorow (With A Little Help Chapter 11)

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Book Cover by Rick Lieder

A few days ago, Cory Doctorow released his first self-published short story collection titled With A Little Help.

Cory has always released his books under the Creative Commons open license, which allows his readers to share and re-mix his books. This time around Doctorow is experimenting in self-publishing the book in a number of different formats from free text and audio podcast, through an audio CD book, to a limited edition hard cover physical book.

In my opinion, together with Charlie Stross, Cory Doctorow is among the most prolific and visionary science fiction writers of our generation. Amazingly, his prolific writing seems to improve, rather than dilute the quality of his work, and With A Little Help is a good example of that. The book contains 12 previously published short stories, as well as one new one – Epoch, which was commissioned by the Ubuntu project‘s Mark Shuttleworth.

You can click any of the title links above and visit his book’s home page for more information on how to buy a copy, or, you can download the full text for free here.

Finally, every day for the next 2 weeks, I will be publishing a free chapter of his audio book as a daily special podcast feature for Singularity 1 on 1.

Today I am posting Chapter 11 – Pester Power.

Pester Power was written in 2008 and originally published in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery. It deals with the question of how do you train an AI to be more human without actual humans to evaluate its attempt. For Doctorow spam seems to be a potential answer to the above question.

Enjoy!

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Constitutional Crisis by Cory Doctorow (With A Little Help Chapter 10)

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Book Cover by Rick Lieder

A few days ago, Cory Doctorow released his first self-published short story collection titled With A Little Help.

Cory has always released his books under the Creative Commons open license, which allows his readers to share and re-mix his books. This time around Doctorow is experimenting in self-publishing the book in a number of different formats from free text and audio podcast, through an audio CD book, to a limited edition hard cover physical book.

In my opinion, together with Charlie Stross, Cory Doctorow is among the most prolific and visionary science fiction writers of our generation. Amazingly, his prolific writing seems to improve, rather than dilute the quality of his work, and With A Little Help is a good example of that. The book contains 12 previously published short stories, as well as one new one – Epoch, which was commissioned by the Ubuntu project‘s Mark Shuttleworth.

You can click any of the title links above and visit his book’s home page for more information on how to buy a copy, or, you can download the full text for free here.

Finally, every day for the next 2 weeks, I will be publishing a free chapter of his audio book as a daily special podcast feature for Singularity 1 on 1.

Today I am posting Chapter 10 – Constitutional Crisis.

Enjoy!

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Visit the Sins by Cory Doctorow (With A Little Help Chapter 9)

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Book Cover by Rick Lieder

Today I am posting Chapter 9 – Visit the Sins.

Visit the Sins was greatly influenced by Cory’s grandfather – Avram Doctorow, who died from the complications of dementia in a senior psychiatric ward in a hospital in Toronto. While Avram was mentally gone pretty much most of the time that he was there, every once-in-a-while he would come back to his senses and realize where he was and what had happened to him. Then, he would start weeping uncontrollably…

For Cory, those moments were some of the saddest and most haunting things he had ever seen…

(As always, you can stream the podcast or download the mp3 file in full.)

Enjoy!

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