Cory Doctorow’s latest novel, For the Win, travels from the industrial slums of India and China to posh American offices and into the fantasy world of online games. Writing the novel took Doctorow to new places as well.
Researching For the Win was different from his other books, according to Doctorow. Normally, he develops a passion for a subject and begins researching and blogging it on Boing Boing, a popular blog where he is one of the co-authors. Readers suggest other angles. “After some time, enough of this stuff crystallizes that I realize I’m writing a novel about it, and I end up writing the novel,” he said.
With For the Win, he started down that path, but realized he’d only just begun to research the subjects he needed, so he started a deliberate campaign, reading about 200 books on labor history, contemporary and historical China and India, histories of Mumbai, information about game theory, macroeconomics, neuroeconomics, and related subjects.
Read the rest of my post at Tor.com: Cory Doctorow on researching For the Win
