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Amazon.com
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
Book Description
A powerful and funny novel about time, tribalism, and a young man's dismaying discoveries about his own life rt is a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, a secret society bound together by a sleep schedule. Around the world, those who wake and sleep on East Coast time find common cause with one another, co-operating, conspiring to help each other out, coordinated by a loose network of encrypted instant messag-ing, secret protocols, and a love of Manhattan-style bagels. Or perhaps not. Art is, after all, in the nut-house. He was put there by a cabal of his friends and loved ones, fellow travelers from EST hidden in the bowels of Greenwich Mean Time, masquerading as management consultants who strive to wire Europe in oatmeal-thick bureaucracy. Scathing, bitter and funny, Eastern Standard Tribe examines the immutable truths of time, of sunrise and sunset, and of societies rebuilt in the storm of instant, ubiquitous communication.
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