Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com

Nimby and the D-Hoppers


Listen Later

This week on my podcast, I once again read my 2003 Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine story, Nimby and the D-Hoppers” 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
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.comBy Cory Doctorow

  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8

4.8

89 ratings


More shows like Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com

View all
On the Media by WNYC Studios

On the Media

9,164 Listeners

Uncanny Valley | WIRED by WIRED

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

459 Listeners

99% Invisible by Roman Mars

99% Invisible

26,200 Listeners

The Gray Area with Sean Illing by Vox

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

10,673 Listeners

Upstream by Upstream

Upstream

1,792 Listeners

Know Your Enemy by Matthew Sitman

Know Your Enemy

1,962 Listeners

This Machine Kills by This Machine Kills

This Machine Kills

199 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,463 Listeners

How to Fix the Internet by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

How to Fix the Internet

117 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,404 Listeners

Search Engine by PJ Vogt

Search Engine

4,308 Listeners

Understood: Who Broke the Internet? by CBC

Understood: Who Broke the Internet?

248 Listeners

Better Offline by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Better Offline

504 Listeners

Taylor Lorenz’s Power User by Taylor Lorenz

Taylor Lorenz’s Power User

279 Listeners

Gloves Off by Gloves Off with Stephen Marche

Gloves Off

56 Listeners