Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Nimby and the D-Hoppers CONCLUSION
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Nimby and the D-Hoppers CONCLUSION
This week on my podcast, I conclude my reading of my 2003 Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine story, Nimby and the D-Hoppers” (here’s the first half). The story has been widely reprinted (it was first published online in The Infinite Matrix in 2008), and was translated (by Elisabeth Vonarburg) into French for Solaris Magazine, as well as into Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, and Italian. The story was adapted for my IDW comic book series Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now by Ben Templesmith. I read this into my podcast 20 years ago, but I found myself wanting to revisit it.
Don’t get me wrong — I like unspoiled wilderness. I like my sky clear and blue and my city free of the thunder of cars and jackhammers. I’m no technocrat. But goddamit, who wouldn’t want a fully automatic, laser-guided, armor-piercing, self-replenishing personal sidearm?
Nice turn of phrase, huh? I finally memorized it one night, from one of the hoppers, as he stood in my bedroom, pointing his hand-cannon at another hopper, enumerating its many charms: “This is a laser-guided blah blah blah. Throw down your arms and lace your fingers behind your head, blah blah blah.” I’d heard the same dialog nearly every day that month, whenever the dimension-hoppers catapaulted into my home, shot it up, smashed my window, dived into the street, and chased one another through my poor little shtetl, wreaking havoc, maiming bystanders, and then gateing out to another poor dimension to carry on there.
Assholes.
It was all I could do to keep my house well-fed on sand to replace the windows. Much more hopper invasion and I was going to have to extrude its legs and babayaga to the beach. Why the hell was it always my house, anyway?
MP3
View all episodes
By Cory Doctorow
4.8
8989 ratings
This week on my podcast, I conclude my reading of my 2003 Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine story, Nimby and the D-Hoppers” (here’s the first half). The story has been widely reprinted (it was first published online in The Infinite Matrix in 2008), and was translated (by Elisabeth Vonarburg) into French for Solaris Magazine, as well as into Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, and Italian. The story was adapted for my IDW comic book series Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now by Ben Templesmith. I read this into my podcast 20 years ago, but I found myself wanting to revisit it.
Don’t get me wrong — I like unspoiled wilderness. I like my sky clear and blue and my city free of the thunder of cars and jackhammers. I’m no technocrat. But goddamit, who wouldn’t want a fully automatic, laser-guided, armor-piercing, self-replenishing personal sidearm?
Nice turn of phrase, huh? I finally memorized it one night, from one of the hoppers, as he stood in my bedroom, pointing his hand-cannon at another hopper, enumerating its many charms: “This is a laser-guided blah blah blah. Throw down your arms and lace your fingers behind your head, blah blah blah.” I’d heard the same dialog nearly every day that month, whenever the dimension-hoppers catapaulted into my home, shot it up, smashed my window, dived into the street, and chased one another through my poor little shtetl, wreaking havoc, maiming bystanders, and then gateing out to another poor dimension to carry on there.
Assholes.
It was all I could do to keep my house well-fed on sand to replace the windows. Much more hopper invasion and I was going to have to extrude its legs and babayaga to the beach. Why the hell was it always my house, anyway?
MP3
More shows like Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com
View all
On the Media
9,165 Listeners
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
461 Listeners
99% Invisible
26,205 Listeners
The Gray Area with Sean Illing
10,666 Listeners
Upstream
1,792 Listeners
Know Your Enemy
1,962 Listeners
This Machine Kills
199 Listeners
Hard Fork
5,464 Listeners
How to Fix the Internet
117 Listeners
The Ezra Klein Show
15,432 Listeners
Search Engine
4,306 Listeners
Understood: Who Broke the Internet?
248 Listeners
Better Offline
503 Listeners
Taylor Lorenz’s Power User
279 Listeners
Gloves Off
57 Listeners