Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

One of the many complaints I hear about Cory Doctorow s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is that it is shallow Readers see a shallowness in character, a shallowness in the work they choose, a shallowness in story depth, and a shallowness in the story s morality I don t see it myself Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom may seem shallow, but there is a great deal of depth to be found if one approaches the book with a willingness to overcome the prejudices and perspectives of our current culture, to [...]

Even though I find him massively annoying in the way I always find professional bloggers annoying read if I am honest with myself, it probably has mostly to do with jealousy , I have to admit, I think it is pretty cool that Cory Doctorow gives away all of his books for free the smug bastard I listened to a surprisingly well produced amateur audiobook of this one about a year ago you can probably still grab it free from wherever it was I found it Podiobooks and even though I didn t love it, I do [...]

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow s debut novel first published in 2003 is a uniquely anti dystopian science fiction offering in a landscape of post apocalyptic also rans.In a world where many writers are dreaming up new variations on the old 1984 theme, Doctorow delivers a pleasingly nonconformist tale where most pestilential elements of the dystopian brand have been made a thing of the past There is enough food in the world, illness has been all but eliminated and people get to [...]

Messy, unfocused Characters are poorly formed and unlikeable Doctorow starts out with several intriguing conceits eternal life though computer style backups and clones, the evolution of themed environments, hard currency replaced by popular esteem but he can t decide which one he finds most intriguing, and he even loses those prime notions a few times through needless tangents.Doctorow obviously loves the cyberpunk novels of Neal Stephenson which are themselves a tangle of ideas and tangents, wi [...]

Like I often do, I went into this book blind, not knowing anything about the plot, and I assumed the title was some sort of a metaphor for a superficial society In fact, most of the book is actually set within Disney World s Magic Kingdom My progress through the book went something like this 1 At the end of the prologue, I was positive I would hate this book 2 At the end of chapter 1, I decided there might be some hope after all 3 Somewhere around the middle of the book, I realized my Kindle had [...]

Cory Doctorow s novella spins a tale set in the Bitchun society a time in the future where death has been cured and money has been replaced by a system of respect popularity points that s immediately accessible since everyone somehow has the internet in their heads now.The Magic Kingdom referenced in the title is THE Magic Kingdom the story takes place in Disney World, which has taken on an elevated importance in a world where people no longer have jobs or, essentially, purpose It s short and br [...]

Here we are, living and dying again in Orange County, FLA.Thought provoking cocktail party fodder I disliked Doctorow s mitten fisted writing, banal hippie dippy characters Beatles references included however, the points I found interesting don t concern the people as much as the technology.Don t bother to savor the words Read it quickly for the premise, then debate the promise of TomorrowLand Essentially a problematic book that I disliked in execution, but highly discussable.

Cory Doctorow is one of the high profile current crop of sci fi authors, he is also famous for his blogs on Boing Boing, and his stance on liberalising copyright laws he even got into a trouble with the legendary Ursula K Le Guin for posting an article she wrote on his web site.The first book I read of Doctorow s was Little Brother I enjoyed it very much though I felt that the prose and dialog could be a little better Three years later I just got around to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, his [...]

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is only 200 pages long, and it s far too short The plot is rushed through at breakneck speed, and wrapped up far, far too quickly, with almost no time given to bringing the whole thing in for a landing.Part of that is because Doctorow puts quite a bit of time into developing his Bitchun society Death has been essentially eliminated If you die, your consciousness is uploaded into a clone and you start over again Tired of living Deadhead for awhile by having your [...]

As a native Southern Californian who has been to Disneyland a minimum of once per year since before birth, how could I pass up a book that combines science fiction with Disney I was really torn between giving this three stars or four It scores high for creativity It s got a very tight plot and some interesting ideas It takes place at Disney World s Magic Kingdom I ve been there once, but it s so much like Disneyland that all the ride references made sense even if the geography changed It s clear [...]

In Cory Doctorow s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, times sure seem to have changed from today Something called Free Energy has basically eliminated scarcity, while the ability to make computer backups of the self and download them into cloned bodies has eliminated death and, for that matter, revolutionized medicine, since all defects can be fixed by downloading to a new body Without scarcity, both work and money have become or less obsolete, and been replaced by Whuffie, which measures how m [...]

Don t be drawn in by the author s reputation Don t be drawn in by an interesting premise Don t be drawn in by some of the impassioned defenses here This book had no redeeming qualities It reads like fan fiction, and bad fan fiction at that very poorly written, laden with typos All the characters are two dimensional, and the women are pure male fantasy Frankly, the whole thing didn t add up for me This is a world in which there is no death, but the narrative tension is dependent on murders WHAT I [...]

Out of every sci fi movement that has come and gone, my absolute favorites are the glorious post cyberpunk transhumanism movement Can I have the application form now, please Thanks to Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow, I get to be giddy on the tides of consciousness uploads and post scarcity economics Who said utopian fiction was dead Please, oh please, give me MORE

I m not quite sure where I picked up a recommendation for this book, but I m glad I did as I ve been able to add Cory Doctorow to my fairly short list of contemporary science fiction writers that I truly enjoy.In this entertaining short novel, Doctorow takes on the classic SF question of What if for something that genuinely could come to pass the no wage economy, where everyone gets the basics they need and it s up to them, through ad hoc arrangements, to find ways to earn social credit to get , [...]

Provide free fuel checkAbolish money checkConquer death checkWhat have you got One Bitchun society Doctorow s novel takes place in a not too distant future where all the above and have been achieved Much of what exists is the predictive stuff you read about in popular magazines today our computers are embedded within our bodies, we make phone calls through our cochlea, etc That conquering death thing could still be someways off Happy participants in the Bitchun society do frequent back ups of t [...]

I m torn when it comes to Cory Doctorow In one sense, I am totally into the fact that the guy is obviously a student of 80 s cyberpunk and computer technology in general However, when I read this book, something didn t seem right about the whole thing The best analogy I can come up with is working hard all day and thinking about eating steak for dinner, but then coming home to find out that you re getting a McDonald s cheeseburger The technology and the ideas are there, but the story did not fil [...]

A posthuman novel set at Disney World Wow, this book was written for me It s been about a century or so since a cure for death and the end of scarcity, and backups of people are downloaded into clones if they die The narrator Julius works at Walt Disney World as part of an ad hoc committee that controls Liberty Square The Disney cast actually makes their own management decisions Woohoo, no hierarchy in the Disney workplace Maybe that only excites me because I used to work there and found it an i [...]

The much longer full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography cclapcenter Okay, so it s finally time time for me to finally make my way through the complete works of cutting edge science fiction author Cory Doctorow After all, he s one of the four editors of my favorite website of all time, the profoundly unique pop culture journal Boing Boing and Doctorow s also a big champion of the exact political issues CCLaP cares about as well, including copyright reform, th [...]

In a lot of science fiction, plot and characters are merely vehicles for the author s vision of his world Philip K Dick is not remembered for his creation of Bob Arctor, for instance, but for his postulation of a existence where identity is as fluid and changeable as the clothes you wear Cory Doctorow s world in the Magic Kingdom made a lasting impression on me, though i remember his characters less than his world This is not to say that plot or characters are weak in any way, but that the world [...]

When I started to wrap my head around the world that Doctorow was laying out, I had trouble figuring out what would be the conflict of this book It s pretty hard core science fiction, full of predictions of technologies and their social ramifications If we no longer had to fear death or illness and no one went without shelter and food and copious entertainment, what kind of conflicts would be left Whenever you have a utopia novel, it usually ends in either discovering that the utopia is actually [...]

I thought the general premise was interesting, and I was invested in learning about this world that Doctorow had created, but I also think he wrote himself into a corner with that premise By eliminating death as a real consequence and then using a murder plus the threat of murders as the catalyst for the plot, he stripped the narrative tension away One of the first things I learned was that death is a minor inconvenience, so then the murder didn t really mean much to me, no matter how many hoo [...]

Doctorow treads well traveled ground here There s a bit of Walter Jon Williams Aristoi, a dash of Vernor Vinge s True Names, and a soup on of post cyberpunk transhumanism, all stirred into a deceptively simple story.Plenty of other reviewers give a run down of the plot dealing with rival groups in Disney World, but I feel like he s saying that the seeds of the things that destroy our relationships and ruin the good things we have are always planted by us, and that we can only move ahead once we [...]

view spoiler Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is the story of Julius who decides to pursue his childhood dream of living in Disney World s The Magic Kingdom after finishing his fourth doctorate Set in the future, the Earth s new Bitchun Society is a place where technology has made material goods overly abundant and death a minor annoyance Julius finds a girlfriend and a new life in Walt Disney World, working to maintain some of the Parks iconic attractions like the Presidents Hall and The Huant [...]

This book really made me think, which is what great books do Here we have a society that should be a utopia death is not permanent, age is reversible, money is not needed, and our problems with obtaining clean energy have been solved So everyone should be happy, right view spoiler Ah, students of human nature know better As a previous reviewer pointed out, our morality is based on the very problems this society solves, so it falls apart when they disappear The question ultimately becomes, if the [...]

At first I thought this was a weird dystopian novel poking fun at dystopian novels I mean it takes place at Disney Even with the light wit and near miss sarcasm, the book stayed entertaining However, by the end you realize that it is truly about hope, failure, reinventing yourself and life And that s when it hits you Well played Mr Doctorow.

In the future we ve cured disease and death, limitless free energy and no economy to speak of Instead, people operate in an economy of Whuffie reputation accorded to you by your peers The story revolves around an ad hoc a team of people running the Hall of Presidents and the Haunted Mansion rides at Walt Disney World, Florida They maintain the rides, manage and staff them, as well as planning improvements All the while, trying to maintain enough Whuffie to stop other ad hocs in the park taking t [...]

What I enjoyed about this book was the fascinating picture of the future Apparently in the future, there has been a cure for death, and people can be altered to look any age Their brains are also like computers, where memory needs to be backed up in case of death so the body can be regenerated Also, brain computers are interlinked on a type of network, so someone can mentally call someone else s brain to talk I really liked reading about the setting of the story, but sadly, the story itself just [...]

Another gimmick that is fun for a chapter The central theme that it is a society which pays you with digital social rating you can spend rather then money is unique, but it is this very concept that create the most blatant holes in the story What makes it so special is what somewhat destroys the story simultaneously.One thing going for it is that is visual treat If you re a fan of Disneyland or other theme parks, I think you will appreciate the comedy and behind the scenes and it s look theme pa [...]

In the future, when we have cured damn near every disease and licked practically every problem society has thrown our way, the only battles worth fighting are fought over our culture do we preserve it, reminding future generation that some things are worth holding on to, or do we plow ahead, looking only to the future Those are some of the questions this book asks, when a handful of groups fight a cold war against each other over the future of Disneyland The book is also damn funny and inventive [...]

Sigh Sure the technology was interesting And the implied societal changes worth pondering And whuffie is worth considering But the characters are all just awful And the main pov character the worst And the machinations in Disney World are annoying, though at least I ve been to the Hall of Presidents and the Haunted House though it has been years and years And the bit right before the end where our hero refuses to restore to backup and has gotten broken I was about ready to throw the book out the [...]