Eastern Standard Tribe

infobox Book |
name = Eastern Standard Tribe
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Cory Doctorow
cover_artist =
country = Canada
language = English
series =
genre = Science fiction novel
publisher = TOR
release_date = 1 March 2004
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 224 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-7653-0759-6 (Hardcover), ISBN 0-7653-1045-7 (Paperback)
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Eastern Standard Tribe" is a 2004 novel by Cory Doctorow, who also wrote "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and "A Place So Foreign and Eight More". Like Doctorow's first two books, the entire text was released under a Creative Commons license on Doctorow's website, allowing the whole text of the book to be read for free and distributed without the publisher's permission.

Plot summary

The protagonist, Art Berry, has been sent to an insane asylum as a result of a complex conspiracy. The novel takes place in a world where online "tribes" form, where all members set their circadian rhythms to the same time zone even though members may be physically located throughout the world. He works in London as a consultant for the Greenwich 0 tribe (though he and his associate Fede are in fact double-agents for the Eastern Standard Tribe). Despite his talents as a human experience engineer, he delivers subtly flawed proposals to them in order to undermine them and enable his own tribe to get a coveted contract. He meets a girl, Linda, after he hits her with his car at 3am. Art has an idea for peer to peer music sharing between automobiles, and plans to give it to the EST (taking a cut to himself.) However, his girlfriend meets his coworker, Fede, and they plan to double cross the EST and sell the idea to another tribe. Knowing Art won't approve of the plan, they do it behind his back. Fede later claims he would have cut Art in on the deal afterwards. However, Art figures out what is going on, and as a result they have him committed to an insane asylum to protect their plot. The book alternates between two point of views: Art meeting Linda in London, and Art in the asylum. The London plot culminates in his attack on Fede when he discovers his betrayal. The asylum plot takes place after his attack on Fede, and culminates in his escape from the asylum and founding of a new company to market health care products using his inside knowledge of psychiatric institutions.

Trivia

In chapter 18, when he is on the phone with a very tired Fede, Art speaks the following sentence, in an attempt to snap Fede awake: "The boats are mambo, but I think that banana patch the hotel soon." The words "mambo" and "banana patch" are a reference to Steve Martin's 1978 live comedy album "A Wild and Crazy Guy", in which Martin says in one skit: "May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?".

Literary significance and reception

Kirkus Reviews described this novel in their review as "A near-future yarn that would have worked better as a piece of speculative nonfiction."cite journal|date=January 1, 2004|title=EASTERN STANDARD TRIBE (Book)|journal=Kirkus Reviews|volume=Vol. 72|issue=Issue 1|pages=p18|issn=00426598] Regina Schroeder in reviewing for Booklist said that "Doctorow’s fast, bizarre follow-up to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a reaction to the impact of instant global communication in which it is hard to tell whether the phenomena being reacted to have actually been observed or are the consequences of his imagination."cite journal|title=Eastern Standard Tribe (Book)|last=Schroeder|first=Regina|date=February 15, 2004|journal=Booklist|volume=Vol. 100|issue=Issue 12|pages=p1047|issn=00067385]

Don D'Ammassa in his review for Chronicle addressed satire in science fiction saying "There was a time when broad satires had an honored place in SF, but that has changed over the course of years, and now novelists have to slip their satire in around an otherwise serious story most of the time. Cory Doctorow pushes the envelope a bit, because very little of the present story is particularly serious, but the satire is done with so light a touch that it's not intrusive at all." He described the novel as "funny and superficially lightweight, but when you're done, you might find yourself subject to troubling afterthoughts."cite journal|title=Eastern Standard Tribe|last=D'Ammassa|first=Don|date=March 1, 2004|journal=Chronicle|volume=Volume: 26|issue=Number: 3|pages=p27|issn=0195-5365]

Release details

* 2004, USA, Tor Books (ISBN 0-7653-0759-6), Pub date 1 March 2004, Hardback
* 2005, USA, Tor Books (ISBN 0-7653-1045-7), Pub date 1 April 2005, Paperback

Notes

External links

* [http://www.craphound.com/est/download.php The official site for the book on Cory Doctorow's homepage.] Includes the full, free text of the book in many downloadable formats.