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Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom where Someone from the Eastern Standard Tribe Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Cory Doctorow, who is a pretty good writer, but can sometimes hit the height of pomposity in his BoingBoing postings, writes:

Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael
Moore appropriating the title of Fahrenheit 451 to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I
conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous
sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some
of sf's classic narratives.

Which made me want to write a series of stories with the same titles as Cory's works which would pick apart the egalitarian pretensions of someone not fit to shine Bradbury's shoes. "Totalitarian assumptions," Jesus. And Shakespeare is anti-Semitic and we don't even want to talk about Mark Twain. Cory's first theft ah, sorry, "title appropriation" demonstrating his remix of Asimov's totalitarian assumptions is "I, Robot."

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