Eastern Standard Tribe

“!http://photos7.flickr.com/10687155_bb745dd7f6_m.jpg!”:http://craphound.com/est/ This is available online at the “Eastern Standard Tribes book website.”:http://craphound.com/est/ and of course at “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765307596/qid=1113505349/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-2115591-5556746.

This is the first book I’ve read by Cary Dotorow, and it’s good stuff. Intelligent, futuristic and a page turner. Sort of post-modern sci-fi with the cyberpunk toned way down. The plot is stretched thin in places but the future speak is spot on. The books short, only about 2 and a half hours long.

There is a fasicination discussion on copyright on the ‘books website’:http://craphound.com/est/000041.html, and links to reviews and discussions about the book etc.

Here’s a good overview:

bq.. Art 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, cooperating, conspiring, to help each other out, coordinated by a global network of Wi-Fi, instant messaging, ubiquitous computing, and a shared love of Manhattan-style bagels.

Or perhaps not. Art is, after all, in the nuthouse. He was put there by a conspiracy of his friends and loved ones, fellow travelers from EST hidden in the bowels of Greenwich Mean Time, spies masquerading as management consultants who strive to mire Europe in oatmeal-thick bureaucracy.

Eastern Standard Tribe is a story of madness and betrayal, of society after the End of Geography, of the intangible factors that define us as a species, as a tribe, as individuals. Scathing, bitter, and funny, EST examines the immutable truths of time, of sunrise and sunset of societies smashed and rebuilt in the storm of instant, ubiquitous communication.