Cory Doctorow's name has been on every other page I've visited in the past few weeks and I finially found out why. Cory does everything.

Yesterday, I assumed that Cory was just another blogger who was getting immensely popular on the basis that his name was everywhere. Not really interested in another high-profile blogger, I went about my life as usual until I stumbled upon a site that actually mentioned what Cory does. Or at least one of the things. As soon as I heard that Cory was a sci-fi writer, I Googled his name to pick out a URL that had flashed past my eyes 20 times in 48 hours that I couldn't remember. Befuddled by BoingBoing showing up at a higher rank than what was clearly Cory's own site, I clicked through and instantly became a fan. I had heard of Eastern Standard Tribe and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom numerous times without actually picking up on the fact that I should be reading them. Cory not only writes novels and short stories, he publishes them on the web under Creative Commons licenses. By most standards, that's free.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has an unbeatable premise. A story told by a first-generation member of a scarcity- and death-free society where wealth is based on reputation. To give it just one more twist, most of the story takes place as a castmember of the new Disney World. It's a quick read at ~140 pages and although my eyes kinda hurt from reading it off the monitor all evening, I recommend it to any sci-fi readers with a dark sense of humor.
I haven't started Eastern Standard Tribe yet although I will probably do so tomorrow. I have high hopes even though I haven't even the slightest idea of what it's about at the moment.

As it turns out, there's good reason for BoingBoing to have a higher pagerank than Cory's main site. He Co-Authors BoingBoing and since it's read by some 250k people a month, it's going to be up there in the rankings. The last-but-not-least tibit of info I have on Cory is that he works at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who's self-proclaimed moto is 'Defending Freedom in the Digital World.' As with many things, I've heard of it but nothing specific yet.

Ladies and Gentlemen, add Cory to the list of people I admire for doing a whole lot of really cool stuff.