In *Fight Me*, the novelist and game developer Austin Grossman uses aging ex-teen superheroes to weigh the legacy of Generation X, in a work that enrobes its savage critique with sweet melancholia, all under a coating of delicious snark:
http://www.austingrossman.com/fight-me
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/01/the-big-genx-chill/#im-super-thanks-for-asking
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http://www.austingrossman.com/fight-me
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/01/the-big-genx-chill/#im-super-thanks-for-asking
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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As they set out to solve the mystery, they are reunited and must take stock of who they are and how they got there (cue Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime").
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Cory Doctorow
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The publisher's strapline for this book is "The Avengers Meets the Breakfast Club," which is clever, but extremely wrong. The *real* comp for this book isn't "The Breakfast Club," it's "The Big Chill."
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoolhouse_Rock!_Rocks
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extended play
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Which is basically what Grossman is doing here. What's more, doing this as a superhero story is a *genius* move - what could be a better metaphor for a teen's unrealistic certainty of destined greatness than a superhero?
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Cory Doctorow
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You know, like teens.
At 52, I'm a middle-aged Gen Xer. I've got two artificial hips and I just scheduled a double cataract surgery. My hairline is receding. I'm an alta kaker. But I wasn't always.
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Cory Doctorow
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We're mostly doing okay (the ones that lived; fuck cancer and fuck heroin and fuck fentanyl). Some of us are doing pretty good. On a good day, I think *I'm* doing pretty good.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://memex.craphound.com/2013/04/16/austin-grossmans-you-brilliant-novel-plumbs-the-heroic-and-mystical-depths-of-gaming-and-simulation/
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Cory Doctorow
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https://memex.craphound.com/2015/08/26/austin-grossmans-crooked-the-awful-cthulhoid-truth-about-richard-nixon/
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Cory Doctorow
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*Fight Me* doesn't come out in the US and Canada until tomorrow (it's been out in the UK, Australia, NZ, etc for more than a month).
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.hope.net/talks.html
On July 20, I'm appearing at Chicago's Exile in Bookville:
https://exileinbookville.com/events/39808
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Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!
https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388
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Authors on Tap: Cory Doctorow
exileinbookville.com