Cory Doctorow Book Signing

Last night we went to a book signing at the Coop. Cory Doctorow read from his next book For the Win. For the Win is about kids in south China taking part in gold farming. For those who don’t know what gold farming is, it is when someone plays video games for a living. They accumulate goods in the game and then sell them on the black market to people who want to level up quickly and easily. In the scene he read, one of the kids finds a epic item that has never been seen before. The foreman tries to take it from him, and the kids fights back. The foreman shoots the kid, and all of the other gold farming kids attack the foreman. It was very violent and exciting.

He was also signing copies of Little Brother. Isn’t that a cool watch he’s wearing? 

After his reading (and before too), he took questions from the audience. He talked about e-books, EULAs, copyright law, and lots of other interesting things. He was in town to speak at a librarian’s conference. He said that librarians are are important in the fight for freedom of information. One of the reasons he thinks that librarians are important is that it is hard to accuse librarians of being bad or greedy because they’re obviously not in it for the money or great vacation deals. That gives them moral authority in this sort of battle. He was telling the librarians (and library students) in the audience to keep up the good work, and telling the rest of us to support our local librarians.

I asked him if he played many on-line games. He said his wife (who works in video games) is the gamer in the family. His talk was very interesting and very funny.

Here’s a picture of him signing my copy of Makers.

After the book signing we went to Fire & Ice for supper. It was a nice night out in Harvard Square.

Stay Froo!