After the Siege {novella}
by Cory Doctorow
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Excerpt:She carried water that day. She'd expected to be balancing buckets over her shoulders like in the schoolbooks, but they fitted her with a bubble-suit that distributed the weight over her whole body and then filled it up with a hose until she weighed nearly twice what she normally did. Other kids were in the stairwells wearing identical bubble-suits, sloshing up the steps to old peoples' flats that smelled funny. The old women and men that Valentine saw that day pinched her cheeks and show more then emptied out her bubble-suit into their cisterns.It was exhausting work, and by the end of the day she had stopped making even perfunctory conversation with the other water-carriers. The old people she met at the day's end were bitter about being left alone and thirsty all day, and they snapped at her and didn't thank her at all.We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
For this story, Doctorow draws from his grandmother's memories of the siege of Leningrad, and the fact that he retells them from the eyes of a 13 year old girl makes them even more disturbing.
It's science fiction, though, and of course the stakes are appropriate. There's mysterious technology (and the free use of it), there are traitors, there's robots and a disease that turns people into zombies. But the main focus of the narrative is the horror of war, and it doesn't really matter under which circumstances this war happens. It also doesn't really matter who is right and who is wrong.
A siege, that means (and has always meant, at least for the besieged) the reduction to the absolute minimum - in terms of physical survival as well as show more morals. There's perhaps no situation where "Homo homini lupus" is so devastatingly true, and the descent into the abyss of violence and inhumanity is masterfully written.
The end felt a bit rushed and too bright after the horrors that came before, but perhaps that's how it has to be; the heroine with her stubborn survival instinct is something like the light at the end of the tunnel right from the beginning, after all. show less
It's science fiction, though, and of course the stakes are appropriate. There's mysterious technology (and the free use of it), there are traitors, there's robots and a disease that turns people into zombies. But the main focus of the narrative is the horror of war, and it doesn't really matter under which circumstances this war happens. It also doesn't really matter who is right and who is wrong.
A siege, that means (and has always meant, at least for the besieged) the reduction to the absolute minimum - in terms of physical survival as well as show more morals. There's perhaps no situation where "Homo homini lupus" is so devastatingly true, and the descent into the abyss of violence and inhumanity is masterfully written.
The end felt a bit rushed and too bright after the horrors that came before, but perhaps that's how it has to be; the heroine with her stubborn survival instinct is something like the light at the end of the tunnel right from the beginning, after all. show less
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1,056 works; 57 members
Author Information
121+ Works 25,901 Members
Writer and activist Cory Doctorow was born in Toronto, Canada on July 17, 1971. In 1999 he co-founded a free software company called Opencola and served as Canadian Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. For four years he worked as European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and in 2007 won show more its Pioneer Award. His first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, won a Locus Award for Best First Novel. His short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More won a Sunburst Award, and his bestselling novel Little Brother received the 2009 Prometheus Award, a Sunburst Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Doctorow also writes nonfiction books and articles, and he co-edits the blog Boing Boing. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- After the Siege {novella}
- Original publication date
- 2007-01-28
- People/Characters
- Valentine; The Wizard
- Important places
- Leningrad, USSR
- Important events
- World War II (1939 | 1945)
- First words
- The day the siege began, Valentine was at the cinema across the street from her building.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)That night, anyway.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels & Comics
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 39
- Popularity
- 746,428
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.54)
- Languages
- English, Italian
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 6
