Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present
An unabashed promulgator of the Internet and its democratic potential,  Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe) explores  the benefits and consequences of online systems in this provocative collection  of six mostly long stories. "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" is a moving  chronicle of a widely dispersed network of techno-geeks laboring to keep the  World Wide Web running as an epitaph to an earth devastated by a bioweapon  apocalypse. In "After the Siege"—the bleak chronicle of a modern siege of  Stalingrad—the horrors of war become fodder for a documentary film crew's  reality-based entertainment. Two tales riff on classic SF themes: "I, Robot,"  in which Isaac Asimov's positronic bots are cogs in a dysfunctional future  totalitarian state, and "Anda's Game," a brilliant homage to Orson Scott Card's  Ender's saga, in which a role-playing enthusiast finds herself immersed in a  surprisingly real world of class warfare fought online by avatars of game  players. Most "meat"-minded readers will find much to savor.(Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.