Mr. Doctorow's upcoming novel
"But it is about Wi-Fi. It's a fantasy novel about Wi-Fi. It's a novel about a serial entrepreneur living in a bohemian neighborhood in Toronto who falls in with a gang of crypto punk, semi-street people who make their living dumpster diving and who've embarked on a program to defeat the Man by putting open Wi-Fi all across the city. That's the straight-ahead science fictiony bit of it--the fantasy part is that the point-of-view character is the son of a mountain and a washing machine whose brothers are variously a member of the living dead, a clairvoyant, a trio of nesting dolls, and an island. And the girl next door turns out to have wings."
uh...WOW. Sign me up. If it's even half as good as Down and Out and EST, it will be a real mind blower.
Nice interview on O'Reilly.