Wunderkind Cory Doctrow continues to display his orientation skills at the
intersection of Humanity and Technology with the collection of short stories A
Place So Foreign and 8 More. In the collection's titular tale, "A Place So
Foreign," a 19th-century boy travels with his father, the Ambassador to 1975.
But when Pa meets with an accident, young James becomes a living anachronism in
1898. Doctrow twists the time travel tale into a parable of data mining, as
mysterious forces work to plunder the past for corporate gain. In one of
several stories about a mysterious alien race who offers to give Earthers a
hand up, he documents the adolescent rage of those left behind when the
"mothaship" takes the anointed few into the brave new world. Finally, in
"0wnz0red", Doctrow explores the dark side of Silicon Valley's connection to
the military industrial complex by posing the question: What happens when
hackers learn to hack the human body?