Eastern Standard Tribe
Ratings16
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings16
Average rating3.6
A comedy of loyalty, betrayal, sex, madness, and music-swapping.
Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He's doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without a question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth onto the world.
Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art's real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.
Instant wireless communication puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn't changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into Tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations. Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted-not happiness, not money, and most certainly not love.
Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain....
Reviews with the most likes.
ableism, the “crazy ex” trope, and some extremely cringe-y sex scenes detract from what's an otherwise interesting premise
I took a sociology class in university in which we learned about two basic methods of societies becoming organized: either by common location, or by common interest. Eastern Standard Tribe takes that concept, as well as the fact that people use computers and other communication technologies more often in their personal lives than in previous generations, and takes them to an extreme conclusion. This novel is full of “tribes”, groups organized by common interest and the time zone that they live in - so while someone might physically live in London, if their mindset and peer group are centred in the Eastern time zone, they're going to adjust their schedule to fit that. And, since most communication is done via email and most people work from home, it's perfectly easy to do so.
That's where the novel falls a bit flat - in some ways, it's less a coherent, sustaining world and more Cory Doctorow's idea of a utopia; and, like most utopian novels, it allows him to express his ideas on what an ideal society should be like. Now, personally, I tend to appreciate a lot of the things that Doctorow advocates for, so that's not entirely a bad thing, and I can follow along as he switches gears between narrative and soapbox.
I got hooked on Cory Doctorow's books with Down and out in the Magic Kingdom. All of his books are slightly weird, and this one doesn't disappoint. Not my favorite, but I still enjoyed reading it.
