In Real Life in Real Life

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow – co-editor of überblog Boing Boing, author of enough science fiction to make the ghost of Hugo Gernsback twitch, copyfighting cyberactivist and general man-about-the-Internet – is on his way in from the UK to be at this Saturday's jam-packed Texas Teen Book Festival at St. Edward's University. The man's got a few young adult novels worth trumpeting about – Little Brother and Homeland, to name just two – but here we're looking at his latest, the graphic novel In Real Life (adapted from his short story "Anda's Game"), just released from First Second Books.

(You know: It's the story in which a young teenager joins an all-girls team in some World of Warcraft-like MMORPG and discovers the real-life consequences of her avatar's wanton slaying of gold farmers? And the economic shifts and personal connections that result from what she decides to do about it?)

Of course, Doctorow didn't adapt the narrative alone, nor did he provide the art for it: That's the work of acclaimed cartoonist Jen Wang, creator of Koko Be Good and other drawn stories. Which is why In Real Life, once a sufficiently fierce tale of old-school labor exploitation in modern pixelated environments (to say nothing of girl power rising in what's still far too much of a boys-only environment), is even better now than it was in its original version. Not just because the artwork is so beautiful – which it is, in panel after dynamic full-color panel – but also because, well, listen:

"We went through a couple different drafts," says Wang, "and the first draft was very similar to the original story. But things needed to be updated, because Cory'd written it in maybe 1999 or 2000? And a lot of things had changed in video games and gold farming, so we just kept pushing it. I'd write a draft and send it to Cory, and he'd give notes and suggestions. And so it changed to update the story, but also to make it fit the medium of comics, to make it a little more active."

"I can sit there and look at what Jen did," says Doctorow, "because she did all the heavy lifting in the adaptation – and I can look at that and say, 'Oh my goodness, that is just brilliant!' Without thinking I have no business talking about how brilliant something that has my name on it is. Because, in this case, I know I didn't make it – it's all Jen's doing."

Doctorow's currently working on his first regular adult novel since 2009's Makers – "I hope to be finished by Christmas," he tells us – but this Saturday he'll be all about In Real Life and that segment of the reading public celebrated by the Texas Teen Book Festival. But, he's quick to point out, his younger-oriented works are by no means just a passing phase.

"I love writing for young adults," says the author, "and I love writing about young adults. First of all, writing a teenage protagonist is amazing, because teenagers have inherent drama in their lives – not because they're drama queens, but because, when you do something for the first time, it has a moment and a drama and a bravery that it doesn't have the millionth time you do it. You know, telling a lie of consequence for the first time in your life, that's incredibly brave, you have no idea how it's gonna turn out; the millionth time you tell a lie of consequence, you're just a liar. But the first time, it's real heart-pounding stuff. I think that's why the loss of virginity is often the literal climax of so many young adult novels: Because adolescence is punctuated by a lot of these one-way transformations, where you kind of lose your figurative virginity, your doing-something-noble-for-a-friend virginity, your defying-your-parents virginity. Changes that, once you make them in your life, things are never the same. And writing for young adults is also great, because young people read books to figure out how the world works, they're in dialogue with the world through books ... and that's an honor, to have that part in the intellectual and emotional and moral development of people."

Cory Doctorow will appear in the panel "Is This Real Life?" with Leslye Walton (The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender), A.S. King (Glory O'Brien's History of the Future), Scott Westerfeld (Afterworlds), and Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Summer of the Mariposas) Saturday, Oct. 18, 12:25pm, in Mabee Ballroom B (Ragsdale Rm. 326).