Copyright activist, speaker, teacher (how about ‘speacher’…or ‘spreacher’), columnist, science fiction novelist, short story writer, co-editor of  Boing Boing,  and the very manifestation of articulate dynamism, Cory Doctorow was in town recently to promote his novel Little Brother (free download here), a fast paced, current-day 1984-like polemic calling for teens to subvert security measures, especially those used by governments that claim to "defend my freedom by tearing up the Bill of Rights.”

As Austin Grossman puts it in the New York Times:

MY favorite thing about “Little Brother” is that every page is charged with an authentic sense of the personal and ethical need for a better relationship to information technology, a visceral sense that one’s continued dignity and independence depend on it: “My technology was working for me, serving me, protecting me. It wasn’t spying on me. This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy…Little Brother argues that unless you’re passably technically literate, you’re not fully in command of those constitutionally guaranteed freedoms — that in fact it’s your patriotic duty as an American to be a little more nerdy."

I’m clearly not nerdy enough… incarcerated I am in fact by technological illiteracy…incapacitated too…neither machine I used to record my conversation with Cory worked for the full duration of our encounter…they did however capture enough, thankfully, to provide his engaging take on the future of the book, the seeds of its destruction…and mention of a guy with a lemon up his nose. Please listen here:

(For discussion of copyright, please watch this space over the coming days for my interview with the acknowledged giant in the field, Bill Patry).

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After working his way up through the publishing trade during the 1950s and 1960s, Tom Doherty became publisher of Tempo Books in 1972 and later Ace Books. In 1980 he established his own publishing firm Tom Doherty Associates Inc., with the help of several investors including silent partner Richard Gallen (of Dell Emerald Books fame), and with it the Tor Books imprint.

Early Tor titles included Norton’s Forerunner; Fred Saberhagen’s Water of Thought; Poul Anderson’s Winners, Starship, Explorations and Guardians of Time; Keith Laumer’s The Breaking Earth, Beyond the Imperium, and The House in November; Harry Harrison’s Planet of No Return and Planet of the Damned; Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen’s Coils; and Steve Barnes and Larry Niven’s Belial

Honours during the early/mid eighties included The Prometheus Award for The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith (1982) and the Nebula Award for Best Novel for Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (1985).

 In 1986 Doherty sold his company to St. Martin’s Press and TDA/Tor Books became a division of the larger company. Over time the portion of non-SF "mainstream" titles at Tor grew, to a point where,  by 1993, they made up more than half the list. As a result a new imprint, Forge Books, was established in order to better market these titles.

Tom does a much better job of charting the history of his career and these companies than I have here with these written words. Hear and learn how and why he has enjoyed such success in  publishing; you can just tell how much fun he’s had in the business. It’s a joy to listen to him.

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David Hartwell has worked as a Science Fiction and Fantasy editor for Signet, Berkley Putnam, Pocket (where he founded the Timescape imprint and created the Pocket Books Star Trek publishing line), and Tor (where he headed Tor’s Canadian publishing initiative, and introduced many Australian writers to the US market). Since 1995, his title at Tor/Forge Books has been "Senior Editor." He chairs the board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention and is an administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature and lives in Pleasantville, New York with his wife Kathryn Cramer and their two children

Each year, with Cramer, he edits two anthologies, Year’s Best SF and Year’s Best Fantasy. Both anthologies have consistently placed in the top 10 of the Locus annual reader poll. In 1988, Hartwell won the World Fantasy Award in the category Best Anthology for The Dark Descent. He has been nominated for Hugo Awards on numerous occasions, and won in 2006, 2008 and 2009.  Hartwell has also edited four best-novel Nebula Award-winners. 

I interviewed Hartwell and Cramer recently at their home/bookstore in upstate New York. We talk about the differences between SF editors and their more general literary kin.

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