I listened to the podcast of "After The Siege," a novella by Cory Doctorow, the other week (I've been driving cross country and walking a lot, I'm going through a lot of audio.) It was really cool and I thought it would be good to post a few notes. (For those of you who want to skip right to the podcast, here's the link, but I'd get the files straight from cory's podcast).
The reading was done by Mary Robinette Kowal, and it was amazing. I very much enjoyed the story, but it was a bit rough for me, at least politically. The story science-fictionalizes stories from the author's grandmother's experiences during the Siege of Leningrad during World War II, to tell a story about contemporary American Imperialism. Politically, something about this comparison, seems a bit fraught; both in its scope, and in the way it understands American Imperialism.
I think it's probably a sign that my politics come very close to intersecting with Cory's that I get so riled up in response to some of his fiction. When there's no chance that I'm going to agree with someone, the fact that I don't agree doesn't worry me. When I'm pretty close, it's a more troubling concern. The story is, however, quite good, so go listen.